


Let Slip the Dogs of War

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark fic, Death Eater Sirius Black, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Manipulation, Minor Character Deaths, Slytherin Sirius Black, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-18 11:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 54,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16993962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: Remus can't seem to escape certain parts of his life. The worst is being a werewolf. The second worst is Sirius Black.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fluorescentgrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/gifts).



> for gen, for innumerable reasons
> 
> special thanks to eve for her amazing and very helpful beta work (and secret keeping!), jessica for insuring this has chapters, and, as always, to mika, whose help and support has kept this alive for months
> 
> the archive warning applies in chapters 6 & 7\. i'm [here](http://astralhux.tumblr.com) on tumblr
> 
> edit: [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY0K0IFkkuJFxezD72LeJJzfrCTrUKCkh) is a playlist for this fic made by request!

_Didn't we almost have it_  
_Almost have it_  
_Almost have it_  
_Almost…_  
_Didn't you want it_  
— “Jenny,” Sleater-Kinney

____\--_ _ _ _

_And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge…_  
_Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice_  
_Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war_  
— _Julius Caesar,_ William Shakespeare

 

 

\-- -- --

**_February 1980_ **

Remus woke at dawn the morning after the full moon with a boot pressed to his ribs. It was several long moments before he realized where he was — the very edge of a forest, with the nascent light of the sun coming up in pale pinks and grays over the horizon — and then again more disorienting seconds before he realized who he was with. Pressing the flat of the boot to his sore and bare chest where his skin was all bruised and cut from the night previous. Remus wanted to say something. But he couldn’t make his mouth work.

“How many has he turned?” Sirius asked. In the spun-glass fragility of his mind which was coming out of the wolf like shaking off heavy sleep Sirius’ voice sounded to Remus like deep poison lingering in very old scars. His boot was still on Remus’ ribs — he could feel the ridges of the sole leaving imprints. The ground beneath his back was cool and damp. He wanted to sleep.

Sirius crouched beside Remus, who could hardly be grateful for the removal of his boot because his hand was on his shoulder, the ragged nails digging in. “Hey,” Sirius said. “Lupin. Come on. How many?”

Remus’ eyes tracked the movement of his arm. Where Sirius’ sleeve rode up just slightly there was the edge of the dark mark visible — the coiling head of the snake like pitch against his skin. Remus could feel gristle stuck in his teeth, the taste of blood at the back of his throat. The light of the sun just touching the base of the trees nearest him. He closed his eyes, turned his head away.

“Five,” Remus said into the arm not gripped by Sirius.

“He told you?” Sirius asked. “Or you were present?”

Remus leveled him with a look. “He told me,” he said. “Before sunset.” His voice in his own ears sounded ragged and split open, an un-voice. It hurt to think. Yet he knew he could not get out of it. “What do you think, we just sit around the bloody campfire and toast his kills after we — ”

“All right, all right,” Sirius said, and at last lifted his hand so he could wave it in the air in a ridiculous gesture. His mouth was very thin and tight with embarrassment and irritation. The gray eyes traveled down Remus’ body, the pale sparse expanse of it. What little was left of him. He wanted to curl in on himself, but his muscles weren’t working right.

Sirius said, “All of them children?” and Remus gave him another look: _what do you think._ He had no idea if Greyback ever turned anyone else.

Sirius said, “Well, fine — easier that way,” and Remus couldn’t tell if he was talking about what Voldemort did or what Greyback did, so he didn’t respond. When he closed his eyes again the sunlight against the paper-thin lids was dizzying.

Then Sirius nudged him in the side with his boot. Remus could tell it was supposed to be a gentle movement. He wanted to laugh — he wasn’t sure if he was still capable. “Up you get,” Sirius said into the slow-waking morning. “I don’t have to be back for a while — ”

Remus knew this, of course.

“ — and you look like you could use some food.”

Raw meat and fur in his teeth. It was occasionally shocking he could still eat at all during the other twenty-nine days of the month. He shifted his shoulders, the movement painful against the half-frozen ground. When Sirius dug his fingers into Remus’ arm and pushed him upward Remus went without protest. There was a moment while Sirius handed him some spare clothes he’d brought with him — too-tight pants and a long-sleeved button down that looked like it’d come straight from an estate sale. The smell of them was musty and the pants were moth-eaten at the ankles but the clothes fit anyway — they almost always did. Then Remus struggled to his feet feeling just born. Sirius wrapped an arm around his shoulders, warm and a little tense, smelling of coffee and fire. Together they Apparated out of the forest.

~

Sirius was nominally living in a flat in Hampstead which he said belonged to the Black family but which none of them had used for years prior to their graduation from Hogwarts. Remus didn’t really have to ask why he didn’t bring him back to Grimmauld Place, which was deteriorating a little with age but which was still their grandest of estates, being that Walburga still resided there.

They landed outside the door and Remus promptly threw up into a bush. Sirius made a noise like this was something unexpected — as if they both hadn’t just spent ten seconds with their ribs compressed like broken accordions, as if Remus hadn’t just spent the night doing god knows what damage to the other body — and delicately stepped around him to the door where he did a complex spell that dropped the warding and let them in. The house-elf which Sirius had acquired upon leaving home was shuffling around the kitchen. He asked it for tea; the idea made Remus queasy again, but he didn’t have the energy to refuse. He walked instead into the den where he slumped onto the ragged couch on which Sirius left his things draped in various stages of upheaval — scarves, trousers, old quills, newspaper clippings from the _Prophet_ about various subversive activities in the Ministry which of course the Death Eaters were entirely behind. There was an ancient radio which Sirius kept tuned at all hours to the Wizarding Classical Music station. There was little difference Remus could hear between Wizarding Classical and Muggle classical, but he knew that wasn’t the point.

He was drifting off when Sirius nudged him awake again — boot to ankle — and held out a plate with sausages and a cup of what smelled like very strong Darjeeling. “Here,” he said. And then, when Remus did not take it immediately: “Fuck’s sake, Lupin. You must know I’m not trying to poison you by now.”

“Yes,” Remus said, feeling groggy from lack of sleep, as he always did after full moon nights. “How on earth could that possibly benefit the Dark fucking Lord.”

Sirius’ mouth went tight at the corners. He nearly dropped the plate and the cup into Remus’ lap. Then he said:

“ _The Dark Lord —_ ” mocking the disrespect in Remus’ voice — “knows about the prophecy. About the child.”

Carefully Remus did not move. Lily and James’ child. She’d called him from their place sometime in the past month or so to tell him. He wondered how Sirius knew. It did not seem like much of a leap to assume they were stalking members of the Order now. Perhaps Lily was already showing, and Sirius had seen —

“He wants — he has some plan,” Sirius was saying, over the ringing in Remus’ ears. “He wants you to tell Greyback.”

Remus cleared his throat. The smell of the sausages was making him nauseous. “What plan?” he asked, though he knew it was pointless. And indeed Sirius just rolled his eyes; he folded his arms. In the pale golden light coming in through the windows he looked very handsome, and very hateful. There were dust particles floating just around the ends of his hair. It looked almost deliberate.

“Just tell Greyback about the prophecy, would you,” he said. “Don’t be fucking difficult, all right,” and then he turned and walked back into the kitchen. Remus heard him yelling at the house-elf to fix more tea. On the radio they were playing Gestural McLeod’s _Fourth Symphony in D Minor_. The music wound around and through Remus’ ears, the slow choral pull of it. He sipped at his tea; it was bitter from no milk or sugar. His heart was pounding arrhythmically against his chest. He knew he should leave now, but that wasn’t precisely the way they did things. He tried sitting up and his body screamed in protest. He told himself there wasn’t much he could do now anyway; he couldn’t just show up to an Order meeting with this information. And until he informed Greyback there wasn’t much anyone could do about anything at all.

Eventually he sort of drifted off again with his neck bent awkwardly between the cushions and the plate of sausages and the tea on the floor beside the sofa. At some point during his fitful sleeping he was aware of Sirius’ hand on the inside of his knee, the ragged dirty nails pressing against the soft fabric of his borrowed trousers. He was too tired to wake himself all the way and see what Sirius wanted though of course he knew what Sirius must want because he never wanted Remus at the flat for anything else — but he was also too tired to go through with it and after a while he felt Sirius’ hand leave his knee and the pressure on the sofa dissipated and then Remus fell asleep for real. When he woke it was past noon and Sirius was coming downstairs in dark emerald robes with his hair pulled back from his face and a harried taut expression about his eyes. He glanced over at Remus sprawled undignified on the couch and he said:

“I’ll expect you gone, of course, when I — ”

Remus just stared at him. Sirius gave an exasperated sigh; when he Apparated the radio skipped. The house-elf poked its head around the corner of the hallway.

“Master’s guest won’t be requiring anything else?”

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose. “No,” he said, and it moved out of sight again. He wondered what it thought of him, coming around every month, smelling of blood and dirt. From the floor he retrieved his tea which had gone cold and drained the rest in one go — it was horrible, but it jarred his grogginess away enough that he could walk into the kitchen himself with his bones pressing tight against his skin and fix with a warming charm a piece of toast which he ate leaning against the counter and feeling like death. In the room opposite he could still hear the discordant crawling piano of some or another wizard’s piece from 1633. He thought about Vanishing the sausages from their plate but he thought also that the house-elf would be insulted if he tried and as such when he’d eaten half his toast he limped back to the foyer. In the mirror beside the door he saw the pale ragged scars running across his face and the thin violet skin beneath his eyes and the outlines of his skull like his skin had been carved away. He wasn’t sure if he’d have the strength to Apparate. Then he caught sight of a note in Sirius’ awful scrawling handwriting: _Portkey to your flat leaving at 12:30._ Beside it was a hairbrush. Remus had only just wrapped his fingers around its handle when it tugged him away. He landed in his living room and immediately made to collapse into his armchair but was stopped by an unexpected voice coming from its depths:

“You certainly did take your time in coming here.”

Remus jumped. It was the old man sitting with his gnarled fingers curved around the armrest like he owned it. Remus didn’t think he should be as surprised as he was.

“Albus,” he said, scrubbing his hand through his hair — the nails ragged and catching on his scalp — so he wouldn’t have to look at him. “I wasn’t — ah, expecting you.” He didn’t bother asking how Dumbledore had gotten inside. The question would either go unanswered or get him one of those highly disapproving looks he remembered all too well from Hogwarts. From the kitchen there came the high whistle of the tea kettle which seemed to prompt Dumbledore to rise to his feet.

“I’ve brewed tea,” he said, as though that were not entirely obvious. “Care for any?”

“No,” said Remus, still standing behind his couch, staring at the worn fabric of it. The sleep he’d gotten at Sirius’ was not nearly enough and there was a raw ache starting up in his neck where he’d had it crooked wrong. His ankle was twinging in a way that suggested he’d turned it wrong or else perhaps been bitten by some other. He knew he needed to tell him, immediately, about Voldemort’s knowledge of the prophecy, but he was having a little trouble thinking.

Dumbledore looked at him. For one strange moment Remus thought he was going to chastise him for his rudeness, but he only walked into the kitchen and lifted the pot from the stove. “Fascinating contraption,” he said. “It is a bit of a hassle to handle every time, but I do love the way the tea comes out just so.” He was smiling beneath the beard. “Muggles certainly have found ways to compensate for all they lack, haven’t they.”

Remus closed his eyes. “Did you want something or.” In fact he was sure he knew what Dumbledore wanted because Dumbledore never wanted anything else from him but his pain was worsening from the Portkey and also from standing for so long. The ache in his bones clinging as it would for the rest of the day, reluctant to let its hold up on him as it was each month, as it had been each month now since he was five years old… He wanted to sit but he did not quite dare because even with his news he didn’t want it to seem like an invitation for the old man to stay. He did not know what it was to be fully in control of himself, either free from the constant pull of others — Dumbledore, Greyback, Sirius, etc. — or else free in his own mind, because the wolf was always there, just on the other side, waiting.

Because he knew he could the old man took his time pouring his tea and walking back to sit in Remus’ armchair. “Are you sure you’re not thirsty?” he asked. He was using Remus’ mother’s china. The sight of it in those long spindled fingers splintered down Remus’ spine.

“I had breakfast at Sirius’,” he said, before he realized what a monumentally stupid thing it was to say. Dumbledore’s eyes were twinkling. He took a sip of his tea. The last of Remus’ Earl Grey.

“Did you,” said Dumbledore. And then: “I assume that in fact you were with Sirius because of — ”

“Yes,” said Remus, who was desperate for this conversation to be over. “And I ran with Greyback last night and he turned five kids.” And I don’t remember anything so please don’t ask any more because I am sick of doing your fucking bidding as though I was a real dog, and I am sick of you controlling me as though I owe you anything for letting me through the doors of Hogwarts despite my condition —

“I see,” said Dumbledore calmly over the chipped edge of the cup, as though five more terrified child werewolves at least one of which was likely to end up on the wrong side of things was something to be taken in stride. “I will report this to the Order.”

What could they possibly do about it, Remus wondered, and tried not to also wonder what they _would_ do about it. As though any of them had ever done a single thing about it.

“Is there anything else?” Dumbledore asked. There was something in his eyes which suggested perhaps he already knew something was wrong and had been waiting for Remus to say it. Remus could still remember the way he’d guided him into his office prior to the start of first year to ask him if there was anything he could do to help ease the transition.

Remus took a breath. Dumbledore could perhaps take this very much the wrong way if he worded it incorrectly. “Voldemort knows about the prophecy,” he said.

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow but indeed did not look as surprised as he should have. He steepled his fingers together and regarded Remus over the bridge of his nose.

“Sirius told me to inform Greyback,” Remus said. “They’re coming up with some plan… if he knows what it is he wouldn’t say.” He watched the old man carefully for any sort of reaction. After a moment Dumbledore said:

“You will tell Greyback, as instructed. You will continue to run with him and his legion. And keep me up to date on all his doings not just with the werewolves but with Voldemort and his Death Eaters as well. In order to keep James and Lily and their unborn child as well-protected as we can from Voldemort’s wrath there must be extreme precautions and measures taken and as such I will expect you to do your utmost to remain within Greyback’s trust, as well as Sirius Black’s. Is that understood?”

Remus was staring at his hands. The nails crusted underneath with blood and dirt. He wanted to cry with how tired he was. “Sirius doesn’t trust me — ”

“You will maintain a working relationship with the both of them,” Dumbledore said, sharply. In the pale light of afternoon his eyes were like shards of ice.

“Yes,” said Remus. “All right.” As though he’d ever expected he’d be capable of doing anything else. As though he’d done much else at all since the Incident. He could hardly believe this was the same life. Feeling a little nauseous again both from the smell of the tea and from his bones resettling themselves like oversized stacks of cards Remus leaned, he hoped surreptitiously, against the wall which separated his living room from his kitchen. He was expecting Dumbledore to finish his tea and leave but of course he did not. In fact when the cup was drained he set it on the table and then pulled Remus’ milk crate of records from underneath. He flipped through them with idle curiosity. Remus ran his tongue over/against his bottom teeth, still tasting grist and blood mixed with the remnants of toast. He closed his eyes because the room was spinning. He could feel Dumbledore’s eyes on him, like he was waiting for him to make some wrong move… At last though he seemed satisfied and stood. Pushing the crate underneath the table again with one foot he said, idly:

“Quite a collection, dear boy.” Then walking into the kitchen he set the empty cup down beside the stove and looked at Remus through the open divider.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said. Then he Disapparated. In his wake there was a sharp ringing silence. Remus stared for a moment at the place where he’d been; then his stomach lurched, and he ran to the sink and vomited. Afterwards he tried to walk to the bedroom but only made it to the couch where he collapsed and passed out still smelling Dumbledore’s tea and the lingering scent of ambrosia.

~

He woke nearing nightfall with his ears ringing from some unremembered sound within a rapidly fading dream. In his sleep he’d rolled over and his nose had become wedged in the crook of the couch where the fabric smelled unwashed and dusty and a little faintly of sex. He sat up and pressed his hand gingerly to the back of his head where the pain sometimes lingered like a malicious spirit. He remembered what Sirius had said about the prophecy and contacting Greyback but it was still a tremendous effort to get up, shower, and cook a can of soup in one of his parents’ aging ceramic pots before sitting in front of the fireplace and tossing in a handful of Floo powder.

“Fenrir Greyback,” he said, sticking his head in.

He like select other members of the pack had access to Greyback’s Floo network despite its location changing monthly. This month he was holed up in Northern Ireland — the forest where Sirius had picked Remus up that morning was on the edge of an abandoned stretch of farmland rimed with frost. The Floo was in the kitchen — when Remus went through he smelled the thick scent of animal fat cooking. There was a lot of ash in this particular fireplace as though it had not been cleaned in several years. For a little while no one appeared. Remus felt the warmish flames caressing his face.

The child who at last saw him could not have been more than seven or eight. She was one of the newer members; she spoke only Dutch, and was wrapped up from head to foot in colored wool. Her eyes widened — Remus supposed the lighting in the fireplace cast his cheekbones into gaunt skull-like shadow — and she ran off very quickly dropping in her haste a dried apple and two molding blocks of cheese upon the floor. Remus watched the apple roll across the flagstones and come to a halt beside the table.

A moment later Greyback appeared. He’d dressed in the interim since Remus had last seen him in an assortment of rangy furs the reek of which was noticeable even through the ash and wood. When he saw Remus in the fire he smiled.

“Come back so soon? This is a surprise — ”

“There’s a — ” Remus coughed. “There’s a prophecy. It involves James and Lily Potter.”

Greyback’s face changed. He spoke a few sharp words to the girl in Dutch and she rushed into the kitchen proper to extinguish the fire on the stove. Because she was so young she could not do it with magic and Remus watched her struggle momentarily before she managed to turn it off. Then she ran again from the room trailing the woolen blanket behind her. Remus heard doors in the back of the house slamming. Then Greyback said:

“Your former classmates?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

Lily’s voice, nervous and quick on the phone: _I know we don’t really… I mean I’m sure the others would be furious if they knew I was telling you but Sybil said —_

“I found out just this morning,” Remus said. He’d become quite adept at lying to Greyback who for all his suspicion and anger had no experience in Legilimency. “It was — the Dark Lord wanted you to know. So he told Sirius who told me — ”

Greyback spat something onto the floor. “They still keep you caged — ”

“I get my information how I can,” Remus said quietly. He was well-versed in Greyback’s bullshit and so he added, “It’s not assimilation if we’re always ahead.”

On the stove the cooling grease popped in its skillet. Greyback began to clean his teeth with his sharpened nails; at last he asked, “What does the prophecy say?”

“James and Lily will have a child in the summer,” Remus said. “It threatens — its existence is tantamount to the Dark Lord dying.”

“And what am I supposed to do with this information? How does this concern me?”

“He has a plan,” Remus said, echoing Sirius’ words.

“What plan?”

“That’s all I know,” Remus said. He could taste ash under his tongue. Through the greenish flames and the smoke Greyback’s eyes were a sickly shade of gold.

“You mean that’s all they would tell you,” Greyback said. “You see, Remus, even after all this time to them you are nothing more than a pawn. They cannot conceive of you in their greater good and so you must assert yourself and forcibly create a space of your own within their future. As I have done and as the rest of our pack must do.”

“The Dark Lord wants you to contact him about it.” He was too tired to listen to Greyback’s rhetoric; his eyes were burning. “That’s all I know,” he said again, “I swear.”

There was something in Greyback’s eyes Remus could not read. It felt very dangerous as of course did everything concerning Greyback. But he leaned back on his haunches from where he’d knelt upon the stone and said only:

“I will contact you again when I’ve found out our orders.” Lifting his eyebrows: “I assume, of course, you’ll want to be a part of whatever it is Voldemort has planned — ”

“Yes,” Remus lied, “yes, I do.”

Greyback looked as though he wanted to reach into the flames and stroke Remus’ cheek. He could have done it, and Remus would’ve had to allow it. He clenched his fists in his own flat, waiting, but Greyback after a moment only smiled, that hideous gray smile, and stood. His knees cracked the same as Remus’. In the firelight glinted his tarnished and massive rings.

“Thank you for this information,” he said. “We’ll speak again shortly.”

When Remus backed out of the Floo he was shaking in every part of himself. His knees were sore from kneeling and there was dust in his hair but he did not want to shower again. His soup had gone cold; he reheated it with magic and sat on his couch watching television without focusing. He felt the usual specific yet undirected anger which usually came up when he remembered every part of his life was orchestrated by another. Every instant doing the bidding of someone who was not himself. So he felt that anger nearly all the time he was awake.

Eventually he managed to get up and put on a record; it was Iggy Pop’s _Lust for Life,_ the sleeve dusty with age, stained in the corner. He cleaned his dishes the Muggle way, the methodical wiping of the cloth blanking out his mind. When he was done he switched off all his lights and lay again on the couch where he drifted off with the music fading in and out of his ears like a personal mantra:

_I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride._


	2. Chapter 2

**_September 1976_ **

At the start of their sixth year Sirius began to lose that sheltered pureblood look primarily because he’d finally somehow convinced his parents to let him grow his hair out and also because he’d gotten considerably taller over the summer and a good deal more gaunt in the face. As such at the start of term he looked less like a Victorian china doll and more like an opioid addict Knockturn Alley apothecary worker. Remus like everyone else at Hogwarts was incapable of not noticing his disarming rakish transformation from mildly attractive popular-because-of-his-last-name to actually would be worth a fuck if he wasn’t such a complete ass. But of course they moved in widely different circles and anyway Remus had hated Sirius for five years at that point and so he only glanced at him, occasionally, during the classes which Gryffindors shared with Slytherins. He was well-known for being dangerous and moody and everyone knew or presumed to know that it was because he’d lost his younger brother Regulus to some unknown but devastating illness prior to his arrival at Hogwarts. Remus, who had been a werewolf for much longer, sometimes wanted to go to Sirius and tell him grief and loss were not excuses for acting like an insufferable twat. But of course he never did.

Prior to this Remus’ only real interactions with Sirius outside of class had been on the initial train ride in ’71, during which Sirius had mocked the dark hollows beneath his eyes — the full moon fell the Saturday immediately following; Remus’ nerves about starting school had served that particular month to make him even more nauseated than usual, and then of course as it turned out until his second year, when James and the others revealed that they Knew — and also his Muggle clothes, and the dirt smudged against the side of his nose from where he’d been working in the garden with his mother only the morning previous. Also on occasion when they ran into each other in the halls, Sirius surrounded by his sneering hateful pack of friends — insomuch as they could be called friends — or at Quidditch matches, Remus sitting in the stands, watching James with Peter and Lily, and Sirius across from them, staring at Remus rather than the game. For a long time Remus had not allowed himself to consider why Sirius was always turning up where he was. He supposed it was part of some naïve form of self-preservation lightning shocked into being the night Greyback had taken him from his bedroom. A stunted form of it which could not grow correctly as it might have were he human and so had taken a ridiculous and rather childish form that indulged him in ignoring what was right in front of him. Which of course in the end was blindingly obvious.

Everything became clear — and so subsequently more awful — in Potions when Slughorn assigned them as partners. He was notorious for two things: breeding his more intelligent students for the Slug Club, and ignoring inter-House feuds to a point where Remus sometimes wondered if he genuinely did not notice the way Slytherins and Gryffindors snarled at each other like caged dogs. At any rate he seemed to get a sick sort of glee out of announcing that Sirius and Remus were to work together to make a potion that could heal infected bite marks of any (non-magical) source. It wasn’t a difficult potion, Remus could tell it was sort of to ease them back into the work after the summer, but the idea of spending two hours in the basement with Sirius Black breathing down his fucking neck was almost more than he could handle. He set up his cauldron and began gathering the ingredients. When he returned to the table he found Sirius had not moved; he was leaning against it, sneering, with his whole body held in a very elegant aristocratic way that made Remus want to tear his throat out.

“What,” Remus said, without really pausing in his movements to look like he knew Sirius probably wanted him to.

“Nothing,” Sirius said. His voice was low under the dim murmurings around them; Remus thought perhaps he’d cast a Silencing charm, except Slughorn would’ve noticed. “It’s just odd, isn’t it.” He had a very cultured accent; he sounded like a minor character in an Oscar Wilde novel whose only job was to appear at a single party, sip tea, and say things of vaguely homosexual origins. Sometimes Remus wondered if he was putting it on for effect.

“What is,” Remus said, bracing himself for what he knew must be coming.

“Pureblood like me,” Sirius said, still with that sneer curling his mouth — shame it was such an attractive mouth, very fine and bloodless at the corners. “Having to work with a half-blood like you.”

Sixth years, Remus thought, his hands clenching about the potions on the table. We are sixth years, we are much, much too old for this… With his book open and his eyes trained on the vial of asphodel he said, “You have half-bloods in your house too, Sirius.”

“Ironic, too,” Sirius continued, as though Remus hadn’t spoken, “what we’re brewing.”

 _We_ aren’t brewing anything, Remus didn’t say, measuring out the ingredients, his hands shaking a little. “Why,” he said, flat.

In future he wasn’t sure what he’d expected Sirius to say. Perhaps something pitched loud enough for his other Slytherin friends to hear so they could all have a laugh at Remus’ expense. As he stirred jasmine into the cauldron Sirius shifted a little closer to him. There was dirt under his perfectly trimmed fingernails.

“You of all… people should know, Remus, about infected bite marks.”

It was the self-preservation kicking in. Remus did not flinch with his whole body but his arm jarred and upset some of the ingredients of the potion which had begun to brew — it sent off a little puff of reddish smoke and Sirius snapped, “Watch what you’re doing.”

“Maybe if you _helped —_ ”

“Half-blood _and_ half-breed, you don’t get to tell me what to do.” There was infinite malice and scorn in his voice. It was nothing Remus hadn’t already heard a thousand times from people who knew — the witches and wizards at the transformation cells who couldn’t keep the disgust from their voices, his Muggle aunt who no longer spoke to any of them. He wanted to pull his wand from the cauldron and hex Sirius right here, Slughorn and everyone else be damned, but he was mostly just numb. All the staring and cryptic little smiles were making sense. He wondered how the wolf had survived this long with him being so utterly clueless.

“I don’t,” Remus said, after a while, balancing the ingredients out, watching Sirius out of the corner of his eye. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“So I suppose your friends just sneak out of the castle every month at the full moon for their own benefit,” Sirius said.

Remus wanted to close his eyes, but he needed to watch the potion brewing. It was a pretty pale lilac color now that it was correctly done; Remus imagined his parents in the raw white fields in Somerset frantically lathering it over his stomach while he screamed in the mud, before they’d understood that there was no cure, and there was no going back. He kept his mouth pressed tightly shut; he didn’t want to say anything, incriminating or otherwise, to fuel Sirius. But Sirius must have taken his silence as answer enough because he leaned his head against his hand, all that hair falling over his wrist, silken, spilled ink.

“Aren’t you going to threaten to attack me?” he asked, after a while.

“That’s not — that isn’t how it works,” Remus muttered. His bones were aching against the constant tidal pull of the moon. Three counterclockwise stirs with his wand, and the potion was done. He sent up a shower of yellow sparks so Slughorn would know he’d finished.

“Well, aren’t you curious how I figured it out?”

“You already told me, you watch my friends.” Remus didn’t want to give Sirius the satisfaction of looking at him, lounging there, decadent, razor-sharp, horrible. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Sirius made a sound — after a moment Remus understood it to be a laugh. It was more of a bark, like a rabid dog. Remus’ fingers were aching. “I have plenty to do,” Sirius said. “Just find it productive to keep tabs on what freaks are roaming the halls of _my_ school — ”

The hex was at the tip of Remus’ tongue when Slughorn came over, jovial, patting his belly. He gave them each five points for their respective Houses — Remus wanted to snap that of course Sirius hadn’t done anything, but Sirius was in Slughorn’s own House, and anyway — he _knew._ He stood there smirking under his fall of hair with his wand resting between his fingers and something sharp and cruel in the gray of his eyes. Remus’ chest felt thick.

For the rest of the class Sirius did something resembling his share of the work — anyway he didn’t talk to Remus anymore. But it was hardly a comfort. As they left the dungeons Sirius who was walking out with his friends said something to one of them — Rosier, maybe — that made him laugh, and glance back over his shoulder at Remus.

The wolf stirred under his skin. Beneath his gritted teeth he tasted bile.

~

For the remainder of the day Remus remained jittery and unfocused — except for James, Lily, and Peter no one at school among the students had ever known or presumed to know his condition. He’d heard about a boy at Durmstrang who had been a werewolf and hadn’t told anyone outside the staff until one unfortunate month when he’d gone for his transformation in their basements and found a couple fucking illicitly at the far wall. He’d tried desperately to get them to leave but they’d laughed in his face until his transformation started — in the end both were somehow miraculously able to get out in time but three weeks later the boy had been hunted down and killed by select of his less open-minded classmates. Remus was mostly untouched because he was friends with James — if Sirius said anything, or if Rosier said anything, or if any of them said anything it was over. He remembered his father, the summer before his first year: _You will have to be very selective of who you tell this thing to. In fact it will be better all around if you don’t tell anyone anything. Because the minute anyone finds out, you will cease to be human in their eyes. Your lycanthropy will supersede every action you make from that point on, and it will be the excuse they’ll look for first when you are angry, or scared, or sad._ And his mother in the corner biting her nails… By the time supper was ready in the Great Hall Remus felt as though he’d run the gauntlet with every possible variant of fear or distrust or suicidal ideation yet stepping into the mass of students felt like roping up his own noose at the gallows. At the table at the far left he saw the group of Slytherins which counted Sirius among its number. He could not see Sirius from here but he could hear that wild bark of laughter even over the din of the other students. Somewhere deep within him the animal stirred again, instinctive reaction.

He walked to the Gryffindor table. James was in the middle of an animated discussion about how they were all four of them going to sneak out of the castle next month for the Led Zeppelin concert in Leeds — when he saw Remus’ face he fell silent, which was so rare Remus knew he must already look like shit. He sat beside Lily who squeezed his hand under the table. It was not something he thought he could discuss in front of the others sitting beside them and so they all finished their suppers very quickly — even Peter, who liked to linger over his food — and then under pretense of going back to a classroom for one of Lily’s textbooks they headed out to the lawn. The sun was just setting, spreading in great reddish hues across the fields and the woods and the Quidditch pitch. It was not quite late enough that the teachers would be angry with them for being outside. Remus explained the situation as succinctly as he could. Then he said:

“And I don’t think you should run with me for a while. Maybe until the end of the semester.” The full moon had already fallen the week previous — _rotten timing,_ James had said sympathetically, because it was only five days into the new school year, and Lily had rubbed his arm and stolen chocolate for him from the kitchens.

“That’s ridiculous,” Lily said immediately, as Remus had known she would.

James’ face was twisted. “I’ll bloody kill him,” he said. “Spying on us like that — ”

“Anyway it’s done now,” Remus interrupted. His hands were shaking; they felt very cold. He’d barely been able to eat and his stomach felt like sharpening knives. “It’s done, he knows. And I don’t want, I can’t afford for any of his friends to know.”

James said, “If he knows now already why can’t he just tell his friends, what difference would it make if we stopped going with you every month? If he already knows.”

In their second year James, Lily, and Peter had approached Remus shortly after the October moon to tell him they were natural Animagi. That they had all of them been born with such a rare condition and come to Hogwarts at the same time _and_ become friends was nothing short of miraculous — later James would make various inappropriate jokes about sniffing each other out. James could turn into a stag, Lily into a strange beautiful bird, and Peter into a rat. They told Remus they knew what he was — Lily said she could sense it, the wolf in him as the animal in her. They told him they were willing to transform monthly with him to keep him company. Later Remus could hardly believe he’d agreed to it — yet it felt almost immediately as though he’d never done anything different. Lily would fly out over the Forbidden Forest just before the full moon rising to scout for the best location and then the other three — often James and Peter holding Remus by the elbows, due to his pain and the shifting within him making it nearly impossible to walk — would rush out from their hidden position on the lawn to join her. James and Peter would turn, and then Remus. He never remembered the nights but it was always easier to wake at dawn with three others and especially Lily who would fly back to the dorms at the first graying of the sky to fetch a blanket and pajamas.

“He — I don’t want him following us,” said Remus. One of his nails was broken and he picked at the ragged edge of it rather than look any of them in the face. “If he sees all four of us he might think it’s safer since one of you at least would keep me from… anyway I don’t think he’ll follow if it’s just me. I don’t think he’ll say anything if it’s just me.”

He saw James and Lily look at each other. The last light of the sun dropped below the horizon; in its wake there was only a pale peach thrown in vivid yellow-pink across the grass and into the lake. Remus watched at their faces — James’ determination, Lily’s pensiveness, Peter’s nervous lip-biting. Then Lily reached over and squeezed Remus’ knee.

“If it’s what you want,” she said.

Remus nodded. “It’s what I want.”

“Just for a few months?” James said, like checking. Remus nodded again.

“Just until he backs off,” he said. Which of course might never happen. But none of them dared to say that. Then Peter said:

“We can still talk though, right? Like, in class?” and Remus felt himself nodding a third time over James’ eye rolling. Sometimes it felt as though nodding was all he’d ever do again.

Lily produced a pack of cigarettes and handed them off. They smoked in silence with it curling about their heads in sickly gray. Remus heard somewhere in his mind David Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide”: _oh no, love, you’re not alone._ Eventually when the sun’s light was mostly gone from the sky they stood and walked back to the castle through the side entrance. At the last second Remus remembered he really had forgotten something in one of the classrooms and headed off hoping he could get there before Filch caught him. He rounded the corner and nearly ran into Sirius. He was leaning against the stone wall with a cigarette and his eyes lidded looking dangerous and cold and strangely amused. His hair curled like typewriter ink ribbons around his neck where it had come undone from his putting it up and his robes were rolled up about his arms. The silver and green tie looped carelessly about his neck.

“Lupin,” he said, in that accent.

“Excuse me,” Remus muttered. But Sirius did not move. He was fiddling with the sleeves of his robes and after a moment Remus caught sight of his wand tip. He bit his lip feeling the skin turn numb and bloodless. He wondered where the others were and if he shouted would they hear in time.

“Saw you sneaking out with your friends after dinner,” said Sirius. “You were heading out to talk about me.”

“No,” Remus lied.

Sirius pushed off the wall, took a step forward. “Is there going to be a problem?”

“No, of course not.”

“I’d think,” Sirius said, very quietly, “that you’d want to keep our little conversation in Potions to yourself. Considering.”

“I didn’t tell them anything, we just went out to have a smoke.” Remus reached up and pushed his hair back and when his arm moved he saw Sirius flinch. It was only perceptible because Remus was watching for it; the movement was muted in the dark robes but it was there, nonetheless. A drawing in at the shoulders and his wand shifting down a little further. He was scared. He was scared of what he knew and of what Remus was and of what Remus could potentially do to him. And likely he couldn’t comprehend that Remus was just as fucking terrified of the same. He felt his incisor catch on the inside of his mouth where he was biting down to keep from screaming. He thought, do not show him you are also afraid. “Why on earth would I tell anyone that you know,” he said. “If I want to keep it secret why would I say anything about it in the first place.”

Sirius didn’t answer him. He was staring into the dust and shadows of the rafters. In the far distance Remus could hear the echoes of footsteps along the corridors. His heart was in his throat.

Then Sirius said, “What makes you so certain that I haven’t already told?”

Because your friends would have put the _Cruciatus_ curse on me in the Great Hall before I could so much as sit down to my dinner, Remus did not say. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m not certain.” He could not quite keep the trembling from his voice. The way Rosier had looked at him laughing as they’d left Potions —

Now at last Sirius seemed satisfied; he was grinning a little and the sight of it was very dangerous in the half-light. “Don’t worry,” he said. His voice was almost soft. “I haven’t said anything — yet.”

A shot of something like lightning raced down Remus’ spine. “What on earth do you mean _yet_.” He could feel his wand within his robes, the golden spark of his magic reaching for it on instinct, and underneath it the panic, the nauseous fear and desperation. He did not know if he expected any kind of real answer but Sirius only began to laugh, that same ragged rabid bark from earlier, and god help him Remus watched at the line of his throat and the gathering of his hair where it fell against his shoulders as he tilted his head back.

“Relax,” Sirius said; his mouth was still curved. “Your secret’s safe with me, Lupin — I’m not about to go bragging to my friends that I’ve been speaking to you, am I.”

Remus frowned. “You said yet.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Ah, fuck’s sake. I was just, I was kidding. Are all werewolves incapable of taking a joke?”

But he hadn’t exactly looked like he was joking. It was very hard to read his expression or to interpret the tone of his voice but Remus was sure Sirius was planning something and as such he was even more certain he’d made the right decision in asking James and the others to back off for a while. He cleared his throat instead of responding, watching the quick dart of Sirius’ eyes which in the dark looked nearly silver. It occurred to him suddenly that they’d been standing there alone for some time now; he wondered where James and Lily and Peter were, and if they were wondering about him, or if they’d gone on to Gryffindor Tower. “Could you — if we’re done, could you let me go past now, I have to grab something — ”

But evidently they were not done. Sirius reached out and enclosed one cold, thin hand around Remus’ wrist. His heart was beating so hard he could feel the pulse of it echoed against Sirius’ fingers. He stepped forward so that their faces were very close, the point of Remus’ nose and the strange artful hollow beneath Sirius’ eye, the scents of sweat and cigarettes, and dragonsteak from dinner, and the strange, wet smell of the dungeons which all Slytherins seemed to pick up eventually. Like an elegant form of decay. Unsettling. Quiet.

“I wonder,” said Sirius, with his eyes on Remus’ mouth. “I wonder what it’s like to lie down with a beast.”

Remus hardly noticed the heat crawling up the back of his neck for his anger. His knuckles came away stinging and bloody before he realized that he’d punched Sirius in the face. He was already reaching for his wand as Sirius straightened up. He was so furious he could hardly see. He could feel his mouth automatically forming some hex, and in the background more of that serrated knife-edge laughter even as the wand slipped forth from Sirius’ own robes. Remus saw a bright flash of green sparking light like an electrical current emit from Sirius’ wand tip. He blocked the spell with his own, watching the blood run across the soft place of Sirius’ upper lip. Then they were upon each other.

~

Upon waking it was several disorienting seconds before he realized he was in the hospital wing. There was a deep and pressing soreness about all his bones and a tightness in his skin not unlike the mornings after the full moon. His face stung as though cut. There was a strange taste in his throat which he realized was either the potion which Madam Pomfrey must have given him or else some residual effects of whatever Sirius had attacked him with. He shifted on the mattress staring fixedly at the ceiling trying not to fall into his dizziness when he heard a voice, low, cutting, angry, coldly amused:

“You whine in your sleep, you know.” Sirius Black on the bed opposite, watching him as he always did. “Like a dog.”

Remus did not answer. He had his mouth pressed together very tightly so that he would not vomit but also so that he would not cast another hex and start the whole thing over again.

“Guess it fits, considering,” Sirius said.

Still Remus refused to speak. Against the sheets he could feel the air was very cold. It was just past dawn judging from the light coming in through the long windows behind Sirius’ bed. The pale nascent pink glow fading into the grayish last remnants of night. Frost on the windowpanes despite it being only September.

Sirius pushed himself up by his right elbow until he was half-sitting against the back of the bed. He made several sharp mocking noises in his throat which resembled a dog only because Remus understood that’s what he was going for. After the third or fourth Remus forced himself to look at Sirius by turning his head which made his stomach twist unpleasantly.

“Could you — ” He had to clear his throat. “Could you quit, please?”

He saw Sirius’ teeth flash in the pale light. “Oh, sorry, is it bothering you?”

Remus sighed. Against the nausea and the dizziness he had to close his eyes. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose feeling for the first time where the skin had split open again along the old scar there. He wondered what he and Sirius had done to each other.

“Lupin…” Sirius’ voice again, nightmarish lullaby singsong tone. “Lupin…” When he refused to react Sirius started whining again in an agitated way and Remus felt his back teeth grinding together. At last he slapped the metal side of the bed and felt the pain of it ricochet through his arm. He sat up too quickly. Through the sparks in his vision he snapped:

“Shut up, shut up, what, what do you _want?”_ With his voice ragged and hoarse from whatever had happened the night previous.

Sirius’ mouth curled. “Look,” he said, and tugged up the right sleeve of his hospital robes. Through the dim light Remus could just make out a series of ugly slashes across his shoulder. The pale skin reddened and shiny with ointment. “Look what you did to me.”

I should have done worse, Remus thought, savagely. He could not remember specifically what hexes he’d used — it was like waking after a night of binge-drinking. When he tried the space where the memory should have been felt raw and numb like a missing tooth. “What,” he said, “do you want me to pretty it up for you or something?”

“Do you even have like a concept of what ‘pretty’ means?” Sirius asked, running his thumb — the right one — over the bridge of his nose, laughing when Remus’ mouth tightened. He started to reach for his wand on the bedside table thinking perhaps he could recall the last spell he’d done and shut that fine mouth up for good when Madam Pomfrey came bustling in through the entrance doors. When she saw both of them awake and sitting up glaring at each other she made a sound thick with disapproval and said:

“You boys have a _lot_ of explaining to do.” Then she clapped her hands and in walked both Slughorn and McGonagall. Her lips were tightly pursed and her eyes behind the gold-wire spectacles were narrowed. He looked strangely as though he were trying not to laugh.

Slughorn said, “It is likely you don’t remember the fight — we had to, ah, sort of knock you both out with magic when you wouldn’t separate or stop casting spells and I’m afraid it resulted in some minor amnesia…”

“It was his fault,” Sirius blurted, pointing at Remus, “he attacked me, he’s fucking — he’s dangerous — ”

Remus winced because except for McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Pomfrey he was not one hundred percent certain of how many teachers knew about his condition. And if Sirius outed him here, now, while he lay helpless it would be sort of the final nail in the metaphorical coffin. But to his relief Slughorn only mildly remarked, “Language, Mr. Black…” and McGonagall said:

“The point at hand is not who began the fight so much as that you both participated in it.”

Sirius had this look — it was anger, but it was more than that, indignation, years of receiving praise and attention for his last name, unused to not getting whatever he wanted. Also perhaps humiliation at having been hexed repeatedly by a werewolf in front of his own Head of House. Annoyance and irritation and all of it seething visibly in the set of his mouth, and in the gray of his eyes. Remus wondered what would be the price he would pay for this. “He did this to me,” Sirius said, shaking his arm as though the wound was not visible immediately to anyone who walked in. “It _hurts_ — ”

“Poppy has already performed every possible healing spell on the both of you and as such all either of you can do at this point is wait for the scars to fade,” McGonagall interrupted. She sounded very close to the end of her patience. “Mr. Black, you and Mr. Lupin both caused a massive disruption in the halls of the school yesterday evening. Regardless of who started it or how badly one or both of you may have been hurt you put other students and staff in danger. This is not — acceptable behavior coming from anyone, but particularly from a pair of sixth year students! Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Remus said, very quickly, before Sirius could interject another sentence. For all the fear tactics he imposed and all the insinuations of threats he’d made to Remus the day before he was as whiny as any other spoiled Slytherin pureblood Remus had ever come across in front of the teachers.

McGonagall looked at him with her lips still very thin and white. “I have taken fifty points from Gryffindor for this infraction,” she said, sounding pained, “as Horace has taken from Slytherin.”

“ _What_ — ” Sirius began, sounding as though he was honestly surprised by this news.

“Yes, and be glad it wasn’t seventy-five,” McGonagall snapped. Sirius sort of flinched — he was glaring at her in a way that Remus thought rather suicidal but after a few seconds he turned instead to focus on his hands where they were still cut and reddish from the fight. It was very nearly gratifying. But Remus refused to allow himself to smile.

Slughorn cleared his throat. “Minerva has allowed me to choose a detention for the both of you,” he said. “So this evening I want you both in the Potions room cleaning the spare cauldrons.” He paused. “Wandless,” he added, and Sirius made a noise sort of buried in the back of his throat. But he did not protest. Neither did Remus. He understood that he’d been very irresponsible letting himself get riled up in that way in front of other people. _Your lycanthropy will supersede every action you make from that point on, and it will be the excuse they’ll look for first when you are angry…_ He thought he could handle one more evening with Sirius breathing down his neck — at any rate Slughorn would be there and he couldn’t try anything else.

“When you both are feeling up to it you may leave and resume your regular schedules,” said Madam Pomfrey, once McGonagall and Slughorn had departed. She was frowning a little still as she walked over to check on the rate of their healing. “If you don’t remember the fight within twenty-four hours that’s fine, that’s perfectly normal, but it should not have occurred in the first place. And I don’t want to see it happen again.”

“All right,” said Remus, quietly. In spite of Sirius having provoked him his face was still burning. He knew what Madam Pomfrey was thinking, however deep down: it happened because Remus couldn’t control himself. He couldn’t control the wildness within him. He wondered if she would or perhaps if she already had consulted Dumbledore on if it was safe to allow him to finish out this year and the next at Hogwarts. He wondered what Dumbledore had said on this whole matter.

Sirius was staring at him when she finally left. “You’re doing all the work,” he said, “my arm’s a bloody fucking mess — ”

“Whatever,” Remus muttered. He closed his eyes — the dizziness had rushed back. Shockingly Sirius did not say anything else. Remus drifted off for a while; when he woke he was alone, and the sun was sparking through the window. He stowed his wand in his robes and slipped out, rubbing idly at the bridge of his nose.

~

Remus saw Dumbledore all of once in the middle of the day. It was during his lunch break when he and Lily were in the courtyard together discussing with violence the things they’d each like to do to Sirius Black. The cut over his nose had stopped stinging at last and his skin had lost some of its tightness but he was still a little dizzy every so often when he moved too quickly and as such he was leaning against one of the stone columns listening to Lily talking casually about the ingredients of a particular nasty potion which she could concoct in the common room if he brought them back after his detention — it would give Sirius boils in unexpected places for a week — when the old man approached.

“Remus,” he said; his voice was almost kind but his eyes when Remus looked up were shrewd. It was a look that at sixteen he was not yet familiar with and it made something coil like rope in his chest.

“Yes, sir,” said Remus, while Lily busied herself in her copy of _Elemental Transfiguration_ and pretended she hadn’t just been loudly discussing another student’s demise.

“I assume that the business from last night is finished.”

Remus heard what he was really saying which of course was: _don’t ever do something like that again._ “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s finished.”

“Good,” said Dumbledore, smiling; briefly he set his hand on Remus’ shoulder. “I always do hate to see extreme conflict among students.” When he walked on Remus felt as though he’d been scalded. Beside him Lily sighed; took his hand in her soft slender one.

“Sirius deserved whatever you did to him,” she said, and Remus managed a smile only because she was looking.

For the rest of the day he watched without intending to for the moon. It came up over the Forbidden Forest as they were eating dinner — a pale blurred wedge in the sky, half-full, waning. Set against the fading lilac of evening it resembled a cold jewel cast in strange water. Remus felt it pulling at him, at every part of him. He was thinking of how long he’d faced his transformations alone — twelve years. He could hardly understand how he could be dreading perhaps three months without his friends to run with him.

At eight he headed from the common room to the dungeons where Sirius already stood with his back to the wall, looking very put upon. He was holding his arm — the injured one — in a way that was plainly affected and shooting green sparks into the half-dark of the hallway.

“Ah, here he is,” Sirius said as Remus approached, “Britain’s most prudish werewolf — ”

 _I wonder what it’s like to lie down with a beast._ “And Slytherin’s whiniest git,” Remus said, gripping his wand very tightly through his robes. “What a pair we make.”

Evidently caught by surprise Sirius very nearly laughed; it was unexpected, and Remus did not know what to do with it. They were still standing unspeaking moments later when Slughorn arrived, out of breath and beaming.

“This way, boys,” he said, opening the classroom door and letting them through. At night the dungeons were lit only by a sparse few guttering greenish candles which smelled heady and scratched the back of Remus’ throat. Slughorn took their wands; Remus could feel Sirius’ eyes on him, as though daring him to do anything without that extra protection… as though Remus would… Then Slughorn, oblivious as ever, said:

“The extra cauldrons are on that shelf — cleaning supplies are in the cupboard against the back wall.”

“Professor,” started Sirius, “my arm — ” He was still holding it; his mouth was twisted at the corner, the cruel silver in his eyes.

Slughorn turned to him. “Yes?”

“Well, it still hurts,” Sirius said, obviously lying. “As such I think I should be exempt from this work — ”

“You can help Mr. Lupin with the drying,” Slughorn said, surprising Remus who of course had expected him to play favorites. “I want this done at the end of two hours.” With that he patted his large belly and walked over to sit at his desk which was in the front of the class at a relative distance to the tables where the students did their work. He pulled from his robes a copy of _Witch Weekly._ Sirius was looking at him with much the same anger and annoyance as he’d looked at McGonagall in the hospital wing.

Remus sighed. Then he walked to the cupboard and retrieved the cleaning supplies.

It wasn’t difficult work. The pewter cauldrons were made of rough material that washed off easily, and Remus of course was used to doing things the Muggle way. For a while he was at least moderately successful in handing the cauldrons off when he was done cleaning them for Sirius to dry; Sirius did it vengefully, mouth set, occasionally shifting his right shoulder and then glancing at Remus like he expected him to say, oh, please, I know you’re in pain, go sit down. When Slughorn stood Remus glanced over at him:

“Has it already been two hours?” he asked, but Slughorn shook his head.

“I want to go to the kitchens for a pastry,” he said. “I trust I can leave you two alone for a few minutes?”

No, Remus thought.

“Yes, of course,” Sirius said. His knuckles were white against the cloth and he showed his teeth when he smiled. Slughorn looked between the two of them for a moment; then he said:

“I’ll be right back. Don’t slack off,” and setting his magazine down on the desk he walked out.

The second he was gone — Remus could have predicted it, reliable as the moon — Sirius threw his cloth unceremoniously down into his pewter cauldron and walked over to sit on one of the tables. Sneering at the door he said:

“What a fucking fool, thinking I’m actually going to do house elves’ work when he’s not in here.”

Remus ground his back teeth together and said tightly:

“If you’re not going to help could you at least come back over here and hand me the things — I don’t want to have to keep leaning over like this.”

Sirius tilted his head as though giving Remus’ request consideration. “Maybe,” he said at last. “If you reconsider my offer.”

“What offer,” Remus asked, though of course he already knew. He’d started washing another cauldron in the sink and his hands had begun to shake — the knuckles were reddish from chemicals.

Sirius hopped back off the table and walked over to stand beside Remus. He smelled like cigarettes, tea, expensive aftershave Remus was sure at their age he did not really need. His hair was loose about his face in soft-looking strands. The strange light of the candles cast a sickly pallor on his skin.

“I wonder,” he said, voice low, “if you would be more receptive to my proposition were it presented in a more convincing way.”

“Convincing,” Remus repeated.

“Yes,” said Sirius. He was smiling just in the corner of his mouth.

Remus frowned. One of his nails was broken just along the edge of the ragged bed of it and he rubbed his thumb against it, feeling the sharp sting of raw skin against cleaning solution. “How do you mean,” he asked finally, already regretting it.

“Well — ” With his voice pitched like that in the dim light he sounded almost as though he were trying to cast the _Imperius_ curse; he was watching Remus with a strange sort of intensity, and his hair against his collar was a little damp with sweat. “Well, I think if you fucked me there’d be less chance of anyone finding out about your little — hairy predicament.”

Remus was already reaching for his wand before he remembered Slughorn had it. “You can’t possibly be — you don’t really want to sleep with me that badly.”

Sirius shrugged. “It would certainly be different,” he said. “Dear old Mum would absolutely have a fucking fit if she knew I’d lain with something so — ”

“Just — dear god, Sirius, please, just shut the fuck up.” Remus had in his anger shot something hot into the water; it had been years since he’d performed wandless magic from some outburst of emotion. Closing his eyes he took his hands from the cauldron, gripping the sides of the sink. “Do you realize — are you even aware of how fucking, of how totally unappealing you are making every part of this? I cannot even believe I’m telling you this but I have absolutely no desire to sleep with you, you’re not — ” His magic was sparking beneath his hands, he was breathing in rhythm, trying to come down from it — “We have nothing in common and I don’t want to fuck you to spite your family. If you’re going to tell your friends about me then go ahead and tell them.”

He could feel Sirius’ eyes on him, calculating. “People don’t usually tell me no,” he said.

“Well, _I’m_ telling you,” Remus said. His voice was shaking. “I’m not going to sleep with you in exchange for you withholding information about me.”

“That’s a pretty big risk to take, Lupin.”

“Believe me, I can live with it.” This was a lie; if Sirius was telling the truth, then Remus was likely dead by morning. He could already see Rosier and the others dragging him out into the grounds, stringing him up in the Forest. Performing the Unforgivables on him until he was shredded meat. At best he would be forced to leave the school from the other parents’ fear of what he might do to their children and would never get to graduate; would likely have to move, maybe as far as Manchester.

Sirius tilted his head. “I don’t think you can.”

“You don’t know a single thing about me.”

“I know enough.” When he reached out Remus did not have time to pull back; suddenly Sirius’ fingers were on his wrist, blistering, tracing the taut muscles. He was touching him like he was some curious experiment Sirius had to do for class and Remus could not stand it. He could not stand the way he’d jolted when Sirius’ skin had first made contact with his, and he could not stand the itching burning feeling in his arm. The last person he’d fucked around with had been Caradoc Dearborn, before the end of fifth year, and it had hardly been satisfactory as it had lasted all of two minutes and Remus wasn’t the one who had walked away fulfilled. He hated the way Sirius looked at him with his fingers on his wrist as though somehow he knew all of that, the superior hateful smirk twisting the corner of his thin, aristocratic mouth. He jerked away. He stepped back a pace. Sirius made a scuffed sound in his throat.

“You don’t,” Remus repeated, staring at Sirius in the dull light. “You don’t know anything. I’m not going to fuck you so you can claim me as, as some trophy, or as some weird exotic part of your life you got done, and I’m not — fuck. You can’t blackmail me into your bed, Sirius.”

Sirius opened his mouth — the expression on his face suggested he wanted to contradict that last statement — but at that moment Slughorn came back in, pastries in both hands. His eyes shifted between Sirius and Remus. A tiny frown appeared between his eyebrows.

“You boys are doing the work?”

“Yes, sir,” Sirius said, without taking his eyes off Remus’ face. “We’re working diligently. Wouldn’t want to disappoint you, sir.”

Slughorn grunted, sank down into his chair. Sirius pushed up his sleeves and took up his drying rag. Leaning over into Remus’ space he turned on the tap. His whole body was a long line of heat against Remus. In the half-dark it felt nearly suffocating.

“You don’t want me now,” Sirius said, quietly, under the rush of water. “But I think you’ll change your mind.”

“I should have hexed your whole arm off,” Remus snarled, feeling warmth rush into his cheeks again. But Sirius only laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

**_February 1980_ **

There was a war on, but as with most things Remus felt removed from it, or like it couldn’t entirely be real. Even somewhat in the center as he was, running information from Sirius to Greyback and from Greyback to Sirius, back and forth, swinging; from Sirius to Dumbledore and back again and from Greyback to Dumbledore pretending pretending pretending it did not twist inside him like a snake coiled, that it did not confuse him to hear Dumbledore’s profession of goodness, of his desire to set things on the right track, while he still used Remus quite openly — he was not yet twenty years old, yet it felt already as though he’d been used up dry, and wrung out again and again. The moon twisted his form monthly far past his capacity yet at least the moon was honest in what it needed from him. Disassembling and pain. According to Greyback the purest form of self.

In the days after the full moon as always he grew restless but there was not much he could do — there were still extremist groups even three years on who would’ve dearly liked to see his head on a stake and because he was receiving a monthly stipend from Dumbledore he had no real need for a job; also there were not many places that would hire him, what with his need for at least three days off a month. He walked to the grocery and got what little food he ever ate — eggs, bread, cheese, meat. He got a curry at the shop in Chalk Farm and ate it watching _Till Death Us Do Part_ with the shades drawn. He reorganized his mother’s china and visited his parents’ graves in Somerset via Apparition — they were buried very near the moor where he’d been bitten. He thought about writing to James and Lily but as usual decided against it. He wondered what would happen were he to just show up, unannounced, at the flat in Hampstead.

One evening a week or so following the initial call to Greyback he was sitting in front of his fireplace carefully throwing in the letters which he received on occasion from vigilante groups whose owls pecked violently at his window until at last he opened it in order to take the letter and a vicious snap at his wrist or hand. He did not read these letters anymore since some of the first had arrived, early ’79, as cleverly disguised Howlers composed of poisonous pretty green ink which stung badly when touched. They all said much the same thing anyway. The ones that did not burn at his touch or hiss or tremble he saved, occasionally, for Sirius’ amusement.

There was a pile of about six or seven left. He had _Fear of Music_ on, as he had pretty much continuously since its release — _this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around…_ When his fireplace crackled sharply he thought he’d thrown one of the especially potent letters in. Then he saw the flames were green. Hastily he jumped to his feet and turned the record off just as Greyback’s head appeared, long-haired and square-jawed, amidst the ash and the burning parchment.

“Remus,” said Greyback. His eyes moved in undisguised interest about the flat.

“Greyback,” said Remus. He tried to hide the letters but the sharp yellowish eyes had already found them. The ugly snarling mouth curled.

“More of the same?”

Remus regretted ever telling Greyback the truth of what he received in the mail. Yet when Greyback had first seen the piles of letters he’d thought Remus was exchanging information secretly with the Order, and it had seemed easier, for once, not to lie.

“Yes,” Remus said. Greyback let out a disgusted sound — in the guttural ruin of his throat it sounded like a cough.

“You are a thing to be feared,” he said. “You should not take such blasphemy from them.”

Remus didn’t answer. He remembered snatches of one of the more recent letters, Sirius reading it aloud from his bed, naked and laughing: _My family is entitled to their own safety, you know —_

“When Voldemort has completed what he has set forth to do all of us, all manner of Dark creatures, will rise in the rankings until we have surpassed them.” Through the fire and the ash his voice was distorted, in the manner of old radio broadcasts. “And then we will take what rightfully belongs to us and they will understand, at last, what they have kept in cages for so long.”

You can’t possibly think any of us will be allowed so much as in the same room with them when he gets the world how he wants, Remus thought. He remembered certain things Sirius had told him: the weaker familial strains would be culled like sick animals, half-bloods with Muggle ancestry as far back as three generations, and of course Muggleborns would not even be considered wizards any longer. Muggles would be enslaved or put to death — Remus remembered the statues of them in the Ministry. He could not imagine to what use his species, or vampires, kelpies, Veela, merfolk, etc., would be put, if indeed Voldemort deigned to find use for them at all. But to say any of this out loud would be tantamount to his giving himself away, and he had become quite adept over the years at hiding things, so he said only:

“Did you have — news for me?”

Greyback’s smile twisted in a way that suggested he’d caught the deflection. But he said, “Indeed. I have spoken to Voldemort and he has informed me of our role insofar as dealing with this prophecy is concerned.”

Even the most aggressive dog will become faithful to someone who trains him properly, said the little Sirius which had lived in his mind and spoken in Sirius’ own voice since 1976.

“What is it?” he asked.

The perpetual hunger in Greyback’s eyes grew exponentially. “If the child poses a threat to the Dark Lord’s life,” he said, “then the child must die.”

A cold weight dropped in Remus’ stomach. Through the soft static in his ears he heard, like the ringing of bells at the hour of death in a plague-infested city: “We must remove any threat to our promised freedom. Therefore prior to the birth of the child we will on some full moon kill it — ”

“He said he wanted James and Lily dead too?” Bile in his throat. _A child born in July, Remus; he can’t know, you have to make sure Sirius doesn’t find out —_

“As the Evans girl is currently carrying the child certainly it will be easiest. But also she is of impure blood and he is a blood traitor and as such it will be most convenient all around. Don’t you agree, Remus?”

The question not so much a question as a challenge. Remus met Greyback’s eyes; hand clenched tightly around his knee, jaw set, he said:

“Whatever need be done in service to the Dark Lord.”

Greyback smiled. Momentarily he glanced away so as to snap at someone in the background — faintly Remus heard the running of feet upon stone. When he looked back there was that thing in his eyes, the animal suspicion Remus didn’t like.

“Did he say specifically how he wants it done?”

“He only specified he wants it completed before July,” Greyback said. “He’s left the means up to us entirely.” He was still watching at Remus’ face carefully for something. Sometimes running with him even though it was under Dumbledore’s orders felt like walking a very fine tightrope and that tightrope was made of the purest silver. Such that every step burned yet every step was necessary for his survival. Because Greyback did not know the whole truth of the situation it was necessary to lie, and because he had to lie sometimes he forgot — where his allegiances were. Certainly he forgot his allegiances with frequency when around Sirius. It was very easy, it had been easy for a while now to think like them, to know what they would want and to pretend to want it himself. He’d given up years prior trying to tame the part of himself he knew Greyback coveted, the wolfish part that only came forth once a month, and the part of himself he knew disgusted Voldemort and his followers, even as they used it for their own purposes. When he had to make decisions he no longer thought, can I come back from this. He thought only of keeping the others happy: Greyback, and Dumbledore. A marionette on strings. _I am the passenger…_

Likely this would upset the Order a great deal. But Remus could only balance in one direction at a time.

He said, “I could — that is, my family has a house… they’ve been out there, Lily and James, they know where it is.” Summer ’75: his parents had gone to France to visit his mother’s aunt and told him he could invite his friends over for a few days. James discovered the cellar and emerged dust-covered and sweating with two bottles of ancient wine clasped in his hands. Peter got hilariously drunk and ran out into the fields in the wash of moonlight howling at the sky in what he claimed was a perfect imitation of Remus. Lily found the old board games in the attic and kissed James on the cheek as a consolation prize when she beat him at Parcheesi — they none of them discussed it again afterwards, although at the time wine-drunk Peter shouted the generic _get a room_ and James went an interesting shade of red before punching him in the shoulder. Remus was laughing, laughing — the moon was waning and he felt good, he felt like he could finally conceive of happiness…

“It’s in Derbyshire,” he said to Greyback, “in the middle of a field. I could tell them they’re in danger and take them there right before the full moon — ” He remembered the last time he’d seen Lily, three days before the December moon; she’d looked exhausted, she must’ve known by then, she would have been nearly two months along. Yet of course she wouldn’t have told him.

“And then lead the rest of us there in secret,” Greyback said. He sounded almost proud — Remus had to fight the urge to clasp his hand over his mouth.

“Yes,” he said. His voice barely audible over the soft crackling hissing of the fire.

“And turn into our true selves at the rise of the moon and kill them all.”

“And kill them all,” Remus echoed, softly.

Greyback’s eyes were awash with the strange feverish ecstasy he reached when talking of things concerning the wolf. “And with the threat of the child eliminated our waiting will at last pay off — he will grant us our rightful places — ”

Remus nodded. He did not trust his voice to speak. Shortly after Greyback cut the connection so he could transmit Remus’ plan to Voldemort and Remus stumbled into the bathroom where he dry heaved into the sink and hit the plaster wall hard enough he heard something crack in his knuckles. He sank back against the wall face in his hands trembling all over. He could not cry; there was no point to it. He had done it in service of Greyback and in service of Dumbledore, building threats so they could later be eliminated, and he was nothing, after all, except a werewolf made to obey its master —

When he thought he could stand without puking or passing out he wandered back into the kitchen area where leaning against the counter he wrote a brief letter to Dumbledore explaining the situation — the timeframe was as yet undecided, and he could not just show up at an Order meeting. He also felt he could not face the old man again so quickly after the full moon. He tied the parchment to his owl — provided, like most other things in his life, by Dumbledore — and sent her off into the night. Then he put on his shoes and an overlarge coat and wandered down the street to buy some more tea.

~

When Remus had initially come upon Greyback — September 1978 — the early autumn moon was a night away from full. It had just risen in spreading ochre glory over the horizon beyond the trees; Remus could feel it pulling away at him, at every part of him. The first and only constant. The pack was staying at the time at an abandoned sheep farm outside Cardiff. Remus had crossed the salt marshes delineating the border between England and Wales and then traveled southerly until at last he reached his destination — mostly hitching rides; he did not dare use Apparition. A very thin boy in a ragged flannel shirt met Remus at the entrance. His eyes sussed out the obvious — the scars across Remus’ face and arms, and the yellowish tinge of his irises. This close to the full moon there was also a scent — Remus who did not have much nor any real experience with other werewolves was overwhelmed by it, the sharp animal musk beneath human skin, and sweat, and fear.

“What do you want?” the boy asked. His breath smelled of blood. He could not have been more than fourteen.

“I’m here to see Greyback,” Remus said. When the boy did not move he lifted his shirt so he could see the scar. The boy’s eyes traced it; he bit his lip, and then he opened the gate.

Remus was led down a broken overgrown pathway to the groundskeeper’s cottage where Greyback slept. He was made to wait outside the door while the boy went inside. From within he heard whispering, and then the sliding of a chair across stone, and then Greyback himself appeared. The face he had seen only once and in an altogether different form yet there was something in it about the wolf which he remembered… He barely reached Remus’ shoulder; he was almost disgracefully ugly, like something misshapen carven from clay rather than stone, but carven by unskilled hands. He walked forward and touched — first at Remus’ shoulder, with the thick fingers and the long yellowing nails, and then at his ribs, where the bite was. Remus had to hold himself very still to keep from flinching. His heart was quivering through his shirt.

“At last,” said Greyback, finally, looking up into Remus’ eyes. His own were nearly swallowed by their yellow, rot poisoning him from the inside, bleeding outwards… When he smiled every one of his teeth was cracked and grayish and most had been filed to points. “Remus. Here you are.”

“I’ve come to, to defect — ” He had to clear his throat because his voice wasn’t working. “I want to join — ” Gesturing outwards, at the fields, the farmhouse, the woods.

“Of course you do,” said Greyback. “After all these years of systematic repression by wizardkind — forcible assimilation within the confines of the so-called ‘hallowed’ halls of Hogwarts.”

“Yes,” said Remus — it was bullshit, but it was such bullshit that he could tell it was real. From other sections of the farm he could see the others — rangy, unhappy looking creatures, hair unwashed, heads bent. He remembered what Dumbledore had said not a week previous — _Voldemort has drawn to him Dark creatures among which of course are werewolves_. An army, indeed.

“I heard of course of your actions in 1976. That they expelled you afterwards is hardly surprising — their comfort around us comes only when we suppress our true nature, when we conform — ”

“Yes,” said Remus again.

Greyback’s eyes moved like searchlights over his face. “Splitting from the world they have created for themselves is the most liberating choice you can make. And you have come now at a moment of great opportunity in our history — Voldemort calls us forth, those who for so many centuries have been denied anything of value; within his ranks there is at last a recognition that we deserve, that we are worth more even than pureblood wizards…”

If Greyback did not want to be seen as the equal of Voldemort’s followers it was — less than sensible he would desire to join. But Remus kept his mouth shut. He thought suddenly of Sirius: _I wonder what it’s like to lie down with a beast._ He wondered which was worse — to know you were being used, or to believe you were the one using.

“Well, I want it,” said Remus. “I want in.”

The moon had pulled up further still from the horizon. The air was the rich violet shade of dusk. It was getting harder to see, but he could clearly see before him Greyback in the wash of moonlight — the thick dark hair and the blunt broken vein lump of his nose.

“Come,” said Greyback, and put his hand again on Remus’ shoulder. With the other he gestured to the boy who ran ahead of them towards the farmhouse. “We will set up a room for you.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t know,” Remus said, as they crossed the threshold of the house. In fact Dumbledore had planned for him to say this, two days previous, helping to set up his things in the new flat in Camden. Remus staring out over the street with a sick clenching feeling in his chest. “He doesn’t know I’ve defected.”

Greyback lifted an eyebrow.

“So I can’t — I mean I’m working… here and there.” Beneath the sleeves of his jacket he was digging his nails into his skin. “I’ll come once a month but I can’t stay — ”

It was perhaps the riskiest part of the whole endeavor. Yet Greyback looked — nearly proud. His eyes fell from Remus’ own to where the bite was and he smiled.

“You are deceiving them,” he said. “You are returning to your true nature and misleading those who have tried to assimilate you.”

“Yes,” said Remus.

His hand was still on Remus’ shoulder; he squeezed down. The sharp points of his nails dug into Remus’ skin through the fabric of his shirt. There was a tenderness in his eyes that made Remus’ stomach turn.

“There will be a bed reserved with us for you, always,” he said.

It felt too easy. It should have been too easy. Yet they transformed the night following and nothing happened aside from the obvious. Greyback spent the day in his groundskeeper’s cottage in some ritualistic fashion and the others moved restlessly about the fields looking into the sky. Several of them glanced nervously at Remus as though expecting — he wasn’t sure what. When at last the time came they walked out — there were fifteen, perhaps twenty werewolves on the premises, Remus did not know if it was the whole pack — and undressed. Most of them were covered in scars. All of them except Greyback had the same tearing whitish mark along the lower ribs. The moon pulling felt more physical and real than Remus could ever remember. In his mind he heard a strange sound, part of the collective — like something dragged repeatedly over piano wires. The tide drawing them in and outwards of themselves.

“Tonight we bear witness,” Greyback was saying, “to the only time in which we are truly ourselves. We welcome our new pack member into our fold with open arms.” He smiled at Remus. Remus closed his eyes; he thought, _oh god, oh god —_

It seized him as it always had. When he woke he was bruised and sore in the same fashion as always — one of them had bitten him roughly about the ankle and there was blood in his left eye, but otherwise he was undamaged. He sat up gingerly, checking every bone. Greyback was watching him. It was difficult in the early after-morning to think clearly, more so when he had to hold it in his head that he was pretending to have developed anti-wizard ideologies. He did not trust Greyback but also he did not trust Dumbledore.

He went back to his room in the farmhouse and slept until noon. Then he thanked Greyback for allowing him to stay —

“You have made your first steps, Remus, into a larger and greater society — ”

— and walked to the edge of the farm, where at the gate feeling marginally safer in doing so than he had upon arrival he Apparated despite the tenderness of his skin. At his Camden flat he vomited with cold sweat standing out on his forehead. He Floo’d Dumbledore to let him know it had been a success. He tried desperately to reconcile himself that this was just how it would be from now on.

~

Three days after the conversation with Greyback Remus was sitting at his kitchen table trying to read _Wuthering Heights_ for about the fifth time — he’d picked up a yellowing copy of it at the used bookstore in Derbyshire sometime after Christmas ’77; he’d read it for the first time in fourth year Muggle Studies which he and all the others in the class had thought was a rather dense choice for a bunch of fourteen year olds none of whom wanted to be there in the first place. He hadn’t been able to get past about page twenty-three but he’d flipped through to find the important points when Marlene told him what they were and was struck, perhaps overmuch, by the notion of Cathy and Heathcliff completing each other’s souls: _If all else perished, and he remained…_ He had only just begun entertaining the idea of physical relationships as a possibility although he was not overly optimistic about his own chances with anyone and the idea of living for someone, within them, being a non-entity outside of them and having them rely on you for the same, was so very abstract and grand as to seem romantic. He read the passage over and over behind the curtains of his four-poster after James and Peter and the others had gone to sleep — it was the only part of the exam he did well on. He had tried in the years since on occasion to reread the book but it was just as dense and bleak as it had been in 1974 and he could not get past page thirty-five and in the end just kept cycling round to the same passage: _Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same._ In fifth year he’d tried, briefly, to apply it to himself and Dearborn. Now he felt as though he’d never met someone who fit the criteria — or rather there was Sirius, but it was not Sirius’ soul Remus felt mirrored his own.

He had just stood to retrieve his pot of tea from the stove when there was a sound like glass shards splitting and then Sirius Black stood in Remus’ living room. His hair was damp with snow and his cheeks flushed. The dark mark fading on his inner forearm as he shucked his coat.

“Got anything to drink?” he asked, stepping around the television where it sat in its bundle of wires on the floor so as to stand before the fire. There was a stain on the tip of his boots which resembled blood but he cleaned it off with a muttered, “ _Tergeo,”_ before Remus could get a closer look.

Remus held up his pot of tea. He’d long since given up saying what he’d said when Sirius had first Apparated into his flat without asking which was, “You can’t just show up here.” August, 1979 — Sirius had come in and landed on a pile of dirty clothes. Remus had snapped at him and Sirius had laughed and things had devolved from there. By the time they were able to speak to each other again there were several skid marks on the walls from hexes but also rug burn on Sirius’ back where Remus had pushed him down onto the floor when he’d gotten tired of listening to him run his mouth. It had only been their third time fucking but they were already quite adept at it. Sirius had said something like, “I’ll show up wherever I want,” and Remus had pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead instead of arguing. Since then he’d not bothered trying to convince Sirius to take the bus and use the front door.

“Is that all,” Sirius said now, glancing with contempt at the tea as though he himself did not down like five cups a day of Darjeeling.

“Well there’s scotch in the cupboard.”

“Get it for us, would you?”

“Get it yourself,” Remus said, as ever disliking being ordered about in his own home — the one place he had that was even remotely his, although of course even that was questionable.

Sirius lifted a single fine eyebrow. The light of the fire cast the loose tendrils of his hair in gold-orange gradient. “I’ve had, like — an unbelievably long day.”

“What, killing the inferiors?”

Sirius rolled his eyes. He stomped over to the cupboard — trailing wet sludge on the carpet — and pulled out the scotch. “ _Evanesco,”_ he said, and the cork dissolved into nothing.

“Could’ve just pulled it out,” Remus said.

“We’re not going to be putting it back in, are we,” Sirius said, and _Accio’_ d two dusty glasses to the kitchen table. Remus exhaled, then he put the tea back on the burner. When he turned back to the table Sirius had poured them each a neat quarter-inch of scotch and was studying the back of _Wuthering Heights_ with uncurious eyes.

“I remember this one,” he said; he’d taken Muggle Studies fourth year with the rest of them only because it was a required course. Remus vaguely recalled hearing that Mr. and Mrs. Black had sent owl upon owl to the board of directors and — it was rumored — even a Howler to Dumbledore, until at last after Christmas Sirius was allowed to drop the class and take up Ancient Runes. “Lots of yelling and pining on the moors or whatever.”

“Yes, essentially.” Remus tried to keep the surprise from his voice. “I never finished it myself.”

Sirius grinned. “Neither did I,” he said. Against the back of the book his nails were as ever bitten down and there was blood in the beds of some of them and dirt in the others. He tossed back his glass — Remus watched the flex of his throat. The shape of his mouth against the glass was red and wet and erotic.

“Why are you here?” Remus asked, after a little while. Usually he went to Sirius’ Hampstead flat only after the full moon, on the off chance any Blacks were visiting during the rest of the month; also Sirius claimed it was easier to Apparate from there to wherever the pack was and back again. Otherwise Sirius came here. Most of the time it was only for sex because they passed their information back and forth in Hampstead but Remus thought it polite to ask. Or rather he didn’t much care about being polite but Sirius was almost always the one who started their sexual encounters; openly wanting anything had always embarrassed Remus.

Indeed Sirius dropped his gaze to Remus’ mouth and said, “Why do you think?” But he did not step forward right away, instead pouring himself more scotch, and then he said, “Actually, I have some news pertaining to what you discussed with Greyback on Tuesday.”

The betrayal of the child. Lily and James. Dumbledore had sent him an owl the night previous in response to his own which said: _Come to the next Order meeting in two days;_ attached to the owl’s other leg was a Portkey. He wondered how many more of his former classmates would refuse to make eye contact with him any longer.

“What about it,” said Remus, leaning against the counter and taking a sip of his own scotch — and then another. The bracing burning bite of it in his throat felt like punishment.

“Greyback told Voldemort.” Sirius was the only Death Eater and indeed one of the only people Remus knew who would say the name out loud — as far as Remus knew he only did it when they were alone, but it seemed to Remus the epitome of his upbringing: a culmination of his arrogance and his conceit and his wealthy blood purist ideals that said more about him than any other aspect of his personality. It was supposed to be the ultimate sign of disrespect among them and they were all of them supposed to be too afraid of the name or else too in awe of the man-thing himself to say it but Sirius did not seem much to care. Perhaps he was just lazy — that also seemed like him. “The way Voldemort said it to us was like — well, for a werewolf, it’s a clever plan. So he approves.” There was something in Sirius’ voice Remus could not read. “Congratulations.”

Something in his stomach was tightening like a fist. “Sirius, it’s not — ”

“Look, whatever,” Sirius interrupted. “I’m not — it isn’t my job to know all the, the nuances of whatever you’re doing on your end with the old man and your fucked up holier than thou team.” Unspoken: I can’t know, because Voldemort doesn’t know whose side you’re really on.

Unspoken, further: You don’t know which side you’re really on, either.  

“Just so long as Dumbledore knows,” Sirius said, and kicked back another quarter inch of scotch. His hand was flexing against the table; the dirt under his nails, the blood —  “Anyway he wants — like, the sooner you get it over with, the better.”

Remus closed his eyes. “Greyback just said before July.”

“Don’t put it off,” Sirius said — that strange something in his voice again, but when Remus looked up he was staring at the milk crate of records beneath the coffee table. “Even my cousin liked the idea. And she’s always been notoriously hard to please. We’re all developing a ravening bloodlust now in service to Dark happenings thanks to you.”

Remus had met Bellatrix exactly once — for some reason she’d come to King’s Cross their first year, presumably to see Sirius off; Remus had bumped into her in the confusion and rush of things. He remembered only her wild dark hair, and the cold sharpness of her eyes. She was two years out of Hogwarts by that point and she’d told him to watch where he was going else he should fall under the train and be killed.

“Ravening bloodlust,” Remus muttered, tossing back the rest of his drink and coming forward to the table so he could pour himself more. His hands were shaking. “Sounds familiar.”

Sirius smiled with half his mouth. He was still staring at the records and after a moment he took up his glass and walked into the living room where he sat in a slightly affected way upon the couch. He pulled the crate towards himself with his foot.

“ _Pink Flag,_ ” he read out loud, shifting through the records with one hand, clasping his scotch with the other. “ _Out of Our Heads. More Songs About Buildings and Food —_ what a weird fuckin’ title — ”

“ _Fear of Music_ ’s even weirder,” said Remus, before he could change his mind. Sirius glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows lifted, curious; Remus exhaled, ran a hand through his hair, set the bottle on the table, and walked with his own glass to his record player where indeed he still had the album waiting from three days prior. He set the needle down randomly and it picked up in the strange angry tense echoing beginning of “Memories Can’t Wait”: _I’m sleeping, I’m flat on my back, never woke up, had no regrets._ Sirius’ eyebrows furrowed together tighter and tighter as the song wound on; it was like listening to a well-pitched car wreck. By the end of it he’d downed another glass of scotch. His head was tilted just slightly listening to the fadeout.

“Maybe not the best introduction to their stuff,” Remus said, lifting the album to flip it over.

Sirius shrugged. “It’s all right,” he said — he was digging one thumbnail into the bed of the other. “It sounded like — ” He bit his lip. “It was okay. It was really different.”

As far as Remus knew Sirius had only heard about three Muggle records total — _Ziggy Stardust, Rumors,_ and _Let it Bleed,_ all of which he’d listened to slightly under duress at Remus’ flat. (Except for _Ziggy,_ which had — slightly different connotations for the both of them.) Since normally his ulterior motive was fucking around with Remus or else exchanging information they did not usually sit and listen to music and talk like this — it occurred to Remus it had been six months of Sirius coming around with semi regularity, and they’d never just sat together in this way. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it and so instead he set his glass down and held up the record.

“Want the other side?” he asked. “Or how about something else.”

Sirius Summoned the scotch to himself so as to pour more in his glass. He held it out to Remus who could not (who did not want to, said the voice in his head) think of any excuses and so took it and poured some as well. By this point they were over halfway done with the bottle. Sirius’ cheeks were flushed again for an entirely different reason than the cold.

“Something else, maybe,” he said.

Remus nodded and slipped _Fear of Music_ back into its cover before joining Sirius on the couch. They thumbed together through the milk crate — shoulders brushing, thighs pressed together, Sirius smelling of cigarettes and whiskey, the dark mark now a grayish persistent stain on his left arm — until Sirius found something he recognized which was _Beggars Banquet._ Remus put it on with magic and for a little while they sat together silently listening to the strange harsh nasal whine: _Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste_. It was not so very long before they finished the scotch and then Remus stood and walked into the kitchen to make them something light for dinner. He heard Sirius’ feet on the linoleum but did not turn until he felt at his shoulder the cold fingers. And then Sirius’ mouth very close to his ear, and the other hand on his hip.

“You won’t eat if we do this,” Remus warned him, though his hand had already stilled against the refrigerator door.

“Remember what I said earlier about ravening bloodlust,” said Sirius.

“Oh, my god,” said Remus. He was laughing in spite of himself — he turned and Sirius’ fingers where they were on his shoulder slid upwards over the round of bone behind Remus’ ear and into his hair. He had this way — this very intense look he would get. The silver in his eyes flashing. He was staring at Remus’ mouth.

“You’re like — you’re just really — ”

“So very eloquent,” Remus said, dryly. Sirius tried to glare at him but instead came off looking slightly drunk and very aroused. He said:

“Would you just — god, shut up already,” as though it were Remus who had been consistently talking. He swept his thumb across Remus’ lower lip, the dry skin catching — then he leaned in and kissed him. There was the bright static shock of it, feeling like falling. Sirius’ mouth opened up against Remus’ and his hand flexed against his hip. Remus made an undignified noise when Sirius’ fingers tightened in his hair. He tasted of salt and whiskey and cigarettes and his lips were shockingly warm. Remus could feel his heart beating through both of their shirts. His fingers found the old scarring on Sirius’ shoulder, sending a tremor through Sirius’ whole body where it was pressed to Remus.

Things proceeded as were customary. Eventually Remus tired of standing and nudged gently at Sirius’ thigh with his knee so that Sirius would take the hint which indeed he did — he broke away mouth loose with the drink and they walked together into Remus’ sparse cold bedroom where Sirius pressed him back into the mattress. His hair wild about his face as he whispered the spell for lube into his fingers and crooked them inside Remus, spreading, teasing forth the golden unspooling at the base of his spine…

Afterwards Remus rose, legs shaking, and walked into the living room long enough to put on _Rubber Soul._ He did not often listen to The Beatles but he felt it might be easier for Sirius to handle than Talking Heads. When Remus reentered the bedroom Sirius had pulled his cigarettes from his discarded trousers and was sitting on the edge of the mattress smoking, staring at the oncoming dusk of evening. Remus closed his eyes, sinking down beside him, tasting salt on his upper lip. After a little while Sirius lay back against the mattress enough so that the back of his hand would touch the back of Remus’. Something felt very delicate and shifting between them which Remus was perhaps too scared to name — in the end he did not have to, because Sirius stood, and pulled on his clothes, and said:

“I need — at the flat in Hampstead, they’re expecting — ”

“Yes,” Remus said, “it’s fine, yes.” We have different jobs and different lives and it’s just sex. It’s only sex.

“You won’t forget,” Sirius said. “About your plan, what you’re going through with Greyback.”

 _It’ll have to be soon,_ Sirius had said. Remus wanted to ask when he’d seen Lily, because there was simply no other way he could’ve known of her pregnancy to tell Voldemort, but he said only:

“I won’t forget.” There was a pause, Sirius hovering — then he pushed into space and Disapparated. The record skipped, badly.

Remus pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he no longer felt like weeping. Then he got up to repair the crack in the vinyl.


	4. Chapter 4

**_October – November 1976_ **

The first shifting alone occurred in the second week of October. At sunset as was customary Remus slipped out onto the grounds with his skin feeling tight and every bone pressing up against it from beneath. At dinner James had given him some pain medication he’d swiped from Pomfrey which of course Remus knew wasn’t going to help as the wolf would likely just throw it back up… all the same he placed it carefully into his pocket as he crossed the Great Lawn and headed into the woods. With any luck he’d remember to take it come morning.

As he crept further and further into the forest he felt the moon where it was pulling up below the horizon. It felt as though someone had ballasted his bones. He was never more aware of himself, of every part of himself than in the moments before the transformation, which had always struck him as ironic considering he was knocked unconscious from the time the moon appeared, and had no idea what he looked like as a wolf, or how he behaved, or really even what he did. It became increasingly difficult to walk the further he went. He was desperate to get as far from the castle as possible. He stared at his hands in the gloaming, the sore joints and tendons pressing out against the pale skin. _Please,_ he thought, stopping at last, kicking out of his shoes, feet bare on the soft cool loam, toes in the silt. _Please don’t let anything happen._

His heart racing he slipped out of his clothes and folded them neatly before resting them in the crook of a tree branch just high enough he was sure neither the wolf nor any other creature could get to them in the night. He sank to the ground, feeling the twigs and the dirt beneath his bare skin. In the last moments of consciousness he remembered the bird’s plumage like silk, and the rat’s beady yellow eyes watching him, waiting, and the solid presence of the stag —

Inexplicably, the silver flash of Sirius’ eyes —

The moon ripped up his spine. When he woke the sky was lavender-gray with dawn and every inch of him ached as it did each month. Scattered in the ground surrounding him were the ripped open helpless bodies of squirrels and birds — their meat and blood still in his mouth. But his hands were unscarred — blood and dirt under his nails — and there were no human bodies and very gradually as the sun came up he began to allow himself to relax. Eventually when he was able to he struggled to his feet and stepped gingerly back into his clothes. He swallowed two of James’ pills dry and started back towards the school.

~

For a while it seemed as though, miraculously, Sirius had at least somewhat backed off. As Remus had predicted because he was no longer running with his friends Sirius had no way to safely sneak out and catch him, so to speak, in the act. Stunningly even Sirius seemed to have that much self-preservation. He watched him warily in the halls and in the shared Slytherin-Gryffindor classes, listening for the sharp bite of his laughter at dinner. At the first Quidditch game of the season Sirius sat between Rosier and Mulciber. He only looked at Remus once, at the very start of the game, with something indiscernible in his eyes — then he looked away and spent the rest of the game mocking Snape, fiddling with the edges of his scarf, and looking generally bored and superior. Afterwards as Remus, Lily, and Peter waited so they could congratulate James on the win Sirius brushed past, close enough that Remus could smell the tea and cigarette scent on his clothes. Remus’ fingers tightened around his wand; he could feel Lily tense beside him, but Sirius did not say anything. He seemed otherwise distracted by his friends, shoving at them and laughing with his robes billowing around him like the wings of some dark creature. When they’d passed Lily exhaled once, sharply, through her nose. Then she smiled at Remus; they did not speak of it afterwards. Privately he hoped if he didn’t acknowledge Sirius at all, even in conversation, he would just fade from their lives altogether.

Close to Halloween they had their first trip to Hogsmeade. It was raining a little in light drizzle that became a steady downpour as they entered the gates and as such the four of them hurried into the Three Broomsticks which was already crowded and overly warm from the crush of bodies. Outside the rain cascaded against the glass. Even through the storm Remus could feel the waning moon relinquishing its hold — like pressure slowly released from inside a pipe. The new moon would fall soon and then it would all start over again. Constant battering, like wrecked ships against the shore.

Peter found a back table that miraculously hadn’t been taken yet. Remus made his way across the shifting crowded room to stand in line for butterbeer, and James went to sit — he probably thought surreptitiously — beside Lily, across from Peter, while they waited. Gryffindor had won their second match of the season and he was still riding off the high of it — likely he thought anything was possible. Remus kept an eye on them for a while, chatting, laughing; then the crowd swallowed him. He looked down at the floor where the tile was sticky from wet shoes and spilled drinks. It was very loud and close and he could feel the places still where his hair was damp against his neck from the rain.

Someone shoved into him from behind and he turned instinctively. At first all he saw was a blur of dress robes. Then the sharp familiar voice:

“Lupin?” Sirius, with Rosier and Mulciber and several others. He’d pulled his hair back. In the dim light his eyes were the dusk gray of moonstone. There was candle flame caught in his teeth when he smiled, feral and mocking.

“Sirius,” said Remus, turning to face the bar again. He glanced out of the corner of his eye towards the table where his friends sat but it was still obscured from view.

“You here alone?”

“Fortunately, no.”

Sirius laughed once. “What, you mean all this time I’ve stayed away from you and you still haven’t decided you trust me?”

“Absolutely not,” said Remus. He knew what Sirius was really asking as did Sirius himself as evidenced by the faint tightening of the skin around his eyes and mouth. Without once looking away from Remus Sirius said:

“Ros, go get us a table,” and then, “Go with him,” to Mulciber, “make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.” It was not the most subtle way of getting rid of people, but his friends went anyway, shooting suspicious and mocking glances over their shoulders at Remus. Once they had disappeared from sight Sirius leaned back and regarded Remus through half-lidded eyes.

“So,” he said, and his voice was quiet under the rush of people but somehow audible — Remus thought of that day in Potions when he’d wondered if Sirius had cast some kind of Silencing charm. A wandless wordless spell that enabled him to speak exactly as he liked to Remus in public with no repercussions — familial black magic. Or perhaps Black magic. “Still not gonna sleep with me, huh?”

Remus took a breath. “There are like, so many other things you could do with so many other people that would irritate your family,” he said.

“Who says I just want it to irritate my family?”

“Well, you did, for one.”

Flash of teeth. Remus could not tell if his smile was amused or not. “Good bone structure _and_ good memory,” Sirius said, “you should apply for Head Boy next year. Although,” tapping at his lower lip, “I don’t know that they allow you to be absent from the position every month without a valid excuse — ”

“Merlin, would you leave me _alone,_ ” Remus snapped. “You are so — ”

“Charming? Convincing?”

“I was going to say aggravating.”

“You wound me, Lupin.” He pressed one hand to his shoulder where Remus knew the scarred flesh lay beneath his robes. “You should suck me off in a broom closet for my trou — ”

“Look, if you’re not going to change your tactics — ”

“All right.” Surprisingly, Sirius held up his hands. His quicksilver eyes flashed. “Congratulations on getting through last month, by the way.”

Remus tried very hard to keep his expression blank. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m not an idiot, am I. I noticed your friends didn’t run with you. I assume that wasn’t by some colossal coincidence.”

Remus shoved his hands very deep into the pockets of his flannel. He bit his lip. “No,” he said, and Sirius smiled, triumphant.

“So congratulations on not getting anyone killed.”

Something flared up in Remus’ chest — not quite the brushfire of panic, but very close. “Sirius — ”

“Quite a risk, though,” he said. “Running in the Forest without your — what are they, your pack — ”

“My friends,” Remus said, thinking of Greyback.

“It seems to me that you might not want to risk that again this upcoming month.”

Another deep breath. Outside the rain was punishing the roof; gunfire from old Muggle war movies Remus used to watch on television when he was very young. “What are you getting at, Sirius.”

Sirius’ mouth turned up in the corner. “I know somewhere much safer you can go to, ah — do what you need to do.”

The line was moving steadily forward. In a few moments it would be Remus’ turn to order for himself and the others. Perhaps by the time he was done this whole conversation would have been erased. Perhaps Sirius himself would have been erased, blown out into the wind. “Where?” he asked, more to shut Sirius up than out of any real curiosity or even belief that Sirius would have a real answer. Thus he was more stunned than anything else when Sirius said:

“The Room of Requirement.” He folded his arms and nodded at the counter, where the boy before Remus had just finished ordering; the witch was gesturing Remus forward, and there was no time to answer. Sirius was already backing off, saying:

“Just think about it, Lupin,” and Remus was thrust forward by the push of the crowd, feeling not unlike he’d just been knocked over the head with a sledgehammer. With care he ordered for himself and his friends four butterbeers which when they were served he took back to the table where James and the others were still waiting.

“What took you so long?” James asked, genially, as Remus sat.

Remus shifted his shoulders, using the movement as an excuse to glance behind him. He could just see Sirius at the far end of the pub with his friends. Their heads were together — Sirius’ dark pulled-back loose curls next to Mulciber’s shocking nearly-white hair and Rosier’s slicked-back auburn — and they were laughing, as they always were. Remus could just make out the edge of Sirius’ mouth, cruel and sharp.

“Just the usual crowd,” he said, and ignored the look Lily gave him.

~

He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell his friends about Sirius’ proposal. Shame, perhaps, though what shame could come any worse after what had already been done to him — no longer allowing his friends to run with him monthly because of a few harsh words almost two months previous — or else the certainty that they would all three of them vehemently deny that it was a good idea. Which then brought forth the unsettling question — did _Remus_ think it was a good idea? Certainly he did not want to. He could not allow himself to, for sanity’s sake — if he did, then that would be the second choice in his life he would have made directly because of Sirius Black, and he could not allow Sirius any kind of hold over him. Certainly not within the choices he made. Certainly not as regarded the most important — or anyway the most pressing aspect of his life, which of course was the other life, which of course was all anyone who knew saw when they looked at him.

He couldn’t afford to think it was a good idea and yet what other choice did he have except to spend the next two full moons worrying that he’d hurt someone in the woods without his friends there to check his behavior.

After a while the rain ceased and Lily suggested they go to the record shop to browse for a bit before heading back. On the way out Remus caught sight of Sirius standing with his back to the door nursing a mug of something warm and told the others he’d catch up with them, he’d forgotten something at the table. Once they were out of the pub he walked quickly to Sirius who was talking to Rosier and touched his shoulder — it was loud, and calling his name would’ve only drawn unwanted attention, or so he told himself. Sirius turned and for the first time since they’d started all this Remus could see he was surprised. It was a strange look on him, and strangely addictive, his mouth slack mid-word and his eyes showing some traces of bemusement. He reined it in rather quickly, though, pulling everything back into that tight almost ascetic control.

“Lupin,” he said.

“What d’you want, couldn’t you see we were in the middle of a conversation — ?” Rosier began, but Sirius shot him a look, and he shut his mouth. Turning back to Remus Sirius tilted his head, lifting his eyebrows, questioning. For no apparent reason Remus wanted very badly to surprise him again, to slacken his mouth and give his eyes that fine, startled cast. It was not conducive at all to any sort of line of thinking — it didn’t even make sense in terms of how Remus had felt at all in the months previous.

And yet — in the woods before the full moon, the brief image in his mind of Sirius’ eyes —

He cleared his throat. “I like, um. That is. Your idea isn’t — it’s not so terrible, maybe.”

Sirius was almost laughing. “Don’t fight the words so hard, you’ll break something,” he said. Then what Remus said seemed at last to register and he did, for a moment, look surprised. Remus chased the expression into oblivion.

“It took me all of three seconds to come up with,” Sirius said, bored, affected. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. “You can’t rely on me to take care of you forever like this.” Rosier and several of the others who were pretending not to listen snorted. Remus felt heat rising up under his collar.

“I’m not relying on you at all — ”

“All right, all right.” Sirius looked horrifyingly as though he might pat Remus on the cheek. “I forgot, Gryffindors don’t make jokes.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “I just thought you should know,” he said, more bitterly than he’d intended, and turned back for the door. He was nearly there when Sirius caught his wrist. His fingers were warm from the mug and dry, and slender.

“There are other things we could use the room for, too, you know,” he said, in an undertone.

Remus wrenched his wrist away. “For the last time, _no._ ”

Sirius shrugged. “Can’t blame me for trying,” he said. “Since you were so nice to take me up on the idea in the first place — ”

“If you follow me up there next month you are going to be — ”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d come to you long before your affliction struck.” His mouth turned up at the corner. “Bring my mother’s best silver — ”

To avoid striking him Remus turned on his heel and walked out. The others were waiting for him in the street. The pavement was wet; in the dull afternoon light it glistened, slick and grayish. In the interim they’d all bought sweets from a passing trolley and Lily handed Remus a colored tart which when sucked on tasted evocatively of the rainbow. He buried his hands in his jacket. He was surprised to find himself shaking.

“All right there, mate?” James asked, watching at his face.

Remus shrugged. Nodded. Shrugged. “Let’s go find the record shop before it closes,” he said. He headed off before any of his friends could say anything else — he couldn’t help sparing a glance in the direction of the Three Broomsticks as they walked, though, and he saw Sirius standing in the window, hand on the glass, watching him in a way that made Remus feel hunted. Overhead birds screamed and flew like macabre symbols across the pale circlet of sun which had slid out from behind the dirty clouds.

He hurried on.

~

The November moon swelled and with it Remus’ bones against his seemingly shrinking skin in the great tidal pull. The day of his transformation he wandered upstairs at half-six to wait for the rising of the moon. The Room of Requirement was already waiting for him upon his arrival, the door pale paneled oak from the outside, five inches of concrete and steel within. The room was sparse, cold with the oncoming winter — windowless, featureless, and isolated. The walls and floor were padded with soft dense material. Remus could hardly believe the idea of doing this had heretofore never occurred to him.

He shifted and woke starving, nauseous, and sore. There were deep gouges in the material along the walls as though the wolf had in its realization of entrapment tried to claw its way out. His left shoulder was badly bruised. Otherwise there was nothing — not even the usual taste of blood between his teeth. The room had provided a small shelf on which he could store his clothes out of the way of the wolf. He walked out — knees cracking, carrying his shoes because they always felt stiff on his feet the morning after — and watched the door dissolve into the wall behind him. He wished he could guarantee with certainty his ability to do this for the rest of his time at Hogwarts.

He was maybe three steps down the hall when he nearly tripped over a plate — it had been set just outside the room; there were two slices of dried toast on it, a little burnt at the edges. Immediately Remus realized it had to be from Sirius — no one else knew he was up here. He stared at it for long minutes, watching at the soft orangeish glow of the warming charm, wondering how long before dawn Sirius had come up with it. His stomach was tight from lack of food and with something else he was too tired to understand and after a while he knelt, cautiously, and picked up the toast. He bit into the crust and waited. When nothing happened — i.e., he didn’t keel over foaming at the mouth or dissolve into liquid — he straightened up and limped with the toast to Gryffindor Tower where since it was Saturday he curled up in bed and slept until noon. When he saw James, Lily, and Peter he found he still could not tell them where he’d been, or who had sent him there.

After these subsequent and strange events he found himself speaking less to them than he ever had in the past — his three closest, and technically his only, friends. He tried to tell himself it was just until he could stop worrying about Sirius but he wasn’t so sure that was entirely true, especially since Sirius, strangely, aggravatingly, wasn’t so much of a threat anymore. Sirius, who watched him from across the Great Hall or in their shared lessons but otherwise also did not speak. Sirius, who ashed out cigarettes into his coffee on Saturday mornings in the Great Hall and kept his hair untidily pulled back and wore his robes non-regulation, rolled to the elbows. Sirius, who had yet to approach the Room of Requirement though Remus half-expected it of him. Sirius, who was on Remus’ mind just enough now that it had become an annoyance.

In what seemed hardly any time at all they were back in Hogsmeade. The weather had gone soft and pale with the sun like an ancient rind of cheese and the wind sharply cold, almost bitter taste to it. The weekend after the semifinals of Quidditch for the first term they headed out — or at least Remus did. He’d asked James and Peter if they wanted to go but James had Quidditch practice, and Peter of course didn’t want to go anywhere without James — he did not say this so much as it was plain in his face, and Remus tried not to feel stung by it. Lily was studying in the library with Marlene and Dorcas for Transfiguration and as such Remus went on his own. It was a strange feeling, heading off in the crisp mid-morning with the air stinging at his cheeks and no constant bickering in his ears from James and Lily. He would not have gone at all had he not wanted to begin picking out Christmas gifts — as such he was in the record shop again, trying to find something he thought Lily might not already own, when the bell tinkled overhead and there was the thud of footsteps on wood and then Sirius Black was standing beside him, resplendent as ever in dragonhide boots and an emerald button-down.

“Lupin,” he said, soft aristocratic drawl. “We just keep running into each other, don’t we.”

“Remarkable coincidence, yes,” Remus said dryly, and then, “Wizarding albums are on the other side of the store.”

In lieu of answering Sirius reached out and ran his hand over the vinyl beside where Remus was standing. There had at one time been a haphazard attempt at actual organization by genre but most of the albums were sorted now alphabetically, so that Joe Cocker rested beside Patsy Cline. Remus could see it didn’t make any difference to Sirius who lifted Cream’s _Wheels of Fire,_ stared for a moment at the cover, and then set it back down.

“The picture doesn’t move,” he said.

“That’s the general idea behind Muggle imagery,” Remus said.

“No wonder they’re always so bored.”

“You know so much about Muggle culture, suddenly?” He shouldn’t have kept talking to him. Why was he still talking to him?

Sirius snorted and lifted another album: Cat Stevens. _Teaser and the Firecat._ It should’ve been in the S section. Remus stared at it, at Sirius’ long clever fingers against the background.

“So the cat’s never going to move.”

“No.”

“Won’t flick its tail or anything like — ”

“Sirius.” Deep inhale. Maybe if Remus stepped back he could afford himself some clarity of mind. This close he could smell Sirius, his cigarettes and the spices of whatever he’d eaten prior to coming here. “What do you want?”

“‘Moonshadow’,” Sirius read, without lifting his eyes from the back of the album. “What kind of name is that.”

Remus thought it very ironic that Sirius, who came from a world wherein most names sounded like the conglomeration of two completely random objects smashed together while drunk, should comment on something so mundane. But he didn’t say anything, figuring Sirius would, deliberately or not, miss the point. Instead he said, “It’s a decent song.” Remembering lengthy spun-out afternoons in the soft cast warmth of the late fall sun, the lonely long hours his first year at Hogwarts, laying under the window in the common room with the album on and pretending as he had for years that he could stand the solitude. _I’m being followed by a moon shadow…_ Nothing more appropriate.

Idly with one hand Sirius tapped an aberrant rhythm against the wooden frames which held the albums in their places. He set Cat Stevens down in front of The Carpenters. Remus noticed his nails were bitten in down almost to the quick. He wondered what Sirius had to be nervous about — if it was a nervous habit at all. His mind flitted for no reason back to the toast. The warming charm Sirius had left on it.

“Are you — ” Sirius began, and then stopped. At the front of the store on the turntable they’d put on _Ziggy Stardust._ The first track was a weird, sort of soulless echoing piece, and Remus watched at Sirius’ expression as he listened to the strange nasally voice: _then I knew he was not lying._

“The hell is this?” he asked, finally, eyebrows etched into a frown.

“David Bowie.”

Sirius’ lips moved over the name. “Never heard of him,” he said, decisively.

Remus barely restrained an eye roll. What do you want, he wanted to ask, some kind of medal? “He’s a Muggle artist,” he said, “he’s very popular.”

“Dunno why,” Sirius said, “he sounds like shit.” But his fingers had gone still against the vinyl, and there was a strange unfamiliar thing in his eyes. Remus let it go, barely. He couldn’t decide whether or not to bring up the toast.

“I noticed you didn’t keep your threat to visit me,” he said, finally.

“My threat — ” Sirius began, with his eyebrows knitted together, and then clarity washed over his face, and his mouth twitched. “Well, after all, Lupin,” he said, “there was a werewolf in the room.”

Remus laughed before he could stop himself. In the low dull light streaking through the windows of the record shop Sirius looked good, the pale line of his throat disappearing into the much darker silks of his shirt. It was difficult suddenly and for no reason to remember that Sirius’ entire family wanted Remus and people like him dead. Undifficult to remember was that Sirius only wanted Remus in his bed to spite his family. But Remus was absolutely not thinking about that right now. Nor about the play of Sirius’ fingers against the records, and how very clearly he could see those hands on him, on his hips, threading in his hair —

On the turntable Bowie was complaining about the weather, and feeling like an actor. Remus shivered. He bit his mouth and moved away, deeper into the recesses of the shop. It was mostly empty today except for himself and Sirius and a few Hufflepuffs in the back, browsing through Joni Mitchell records in a milk crate on the floor. He picked out an album at random — _Beggars Banquet,_ badly out of place — and when he turned around Sirius was at his elbow, all that dark hair falling, and Remus felt his want rush through him so suddenly it was nearly nauseating. He had to swallow to keep it off his face.

“I’m not set out to kill you,” Sirius said. “You’ve never trusted me but that’s not what this is about.”

“What is it about, then.”

“It’s — ” Remus had never seen Sirius uncertain and wasn’t sure how to feel about it. There was something so strange and desperate and proud in his gaze he very nearly pitied him. From outside the sunlight caught dust motes in the air and on the dirty scuffed floor.

“It’s you leaving toast for me the morning after a full moon,” Remus said, when it was clear Sirius wasn’t going to.

There was something very fast and blurred in Sirius’ eyes, too quick for Remus to catch. Then Sirius shrugged. “They say feeding strays is the best way to get them to keep coming back,” he said, and Remus felt it, that bright spark of anger low in his gut, real anger that Sirius could incite quicker than seemingly anyone else, and also humiliation, and also, shamefully, more arousal.

“You’re the one constantly seeking me out,” Remus said. “Here, and in school — ”

“Yet I never notice you backing out of a conversation.”

“Must be the wolf in me,” Remus said, feeling his nails dig grooves into the album. “Just can’t keep out of conflict.” This of course was entirely a lie, because aside from the ones with Sirius Remus never got into fights if he could help it, but Sirius instead of pointing this out only said:

“I think you just like talking to me.”

“Why would I — ”

“Because I’m less boring and predictable than your other friends.”

Boring and predictable were not adjectives Remus would’ve ever used to describe James or Lily, but he didn’t say it. “You flatter yourself.”

“Yes, every day.”

“It’s not nearly as attractive as you think.”

“Got your attention.”

“No, actually — ” Remus paused, and backed a little further into the shop; the Hufflepuffs were leaving with their purchases, and the shopkeeper had ducked into a back room, either to smoke what was left of the joint Remus could smell or else just to get out of the late afternoon sun which hit exactly at his desk at this hour — “what got my attention was you threatening to blackmail me.”

“Still hasn’t worked,” Sirius said, sounding regretful.

“Are all purebloods as thick as you — like, oh yes, I want to sleep with him, think I’ll try blackmail, that just sounds so, so sexy — ”

Sirius laughed. His face had that same surprised look Remus had chased at the Three Broomsticks. “It probably comes from the inheritance,” he said.

“Right, because you’ve never been denied a single thing in your life.”

“No,” Sirius agreed cheerfully. He was leaning a little forward — Remus could tell he thought he was being subtle about it.

“It must be so hard, then, dealing with me.”

Flash of teeth. “In more ways than one.”

Remus tried not to laugh. He lifted his hand to cover his mouth because he thought it might be easier that way and also as an excuse to duck his head a little so as to stop looking directly into the sunflare of Sirius’ eyes, which in the afternoon sparked dangerously. His eyes silver, something Remus could not touch — he thought it should count as a sign he should stay very, very far away. He remembered the fight, the subsequent detention — the toast —

He looked up and said, “I hope you never, ever get anything you want from me,” and Sirius barked out a laugh, rough caught sound, and stepped forward. Their shoes were touching — dragon leather against scuffed Oxfords. When Sirius reached up and touched Remus’ cheek — the movement so sudden and so unexpected Remus didn’t have time to jostle him away — his skin was warm, and dry, the nailbeds ragged in Remus’ hair. There was a spot of grease just on the tip of his nose. Remus was going crosseyed trying to look at him, and then suddenly he wasn’t looking at all. Sirius’ mouth was cold and chapped; he tasted of cigarettes and tea, and he was holding Remus’ head still, delicately, with his thumb against the rapid pulse at the underside of Remus’ jaw. Through the rush of blood in his ears Remus could just hear the music, as though someone had magicked Bowie to play on infinite loop in his head: _keep your electric eye on me, babe…_ The wailing desperation of it. And Sirius’ lips catching on his and trembling.

It felt as though they stayed that way for hours. In fact the chorus was barely over before Sirius was pulling away, fingers trailing over Remus’ face, eyes skipping around; he opened his mouth to say something but then his gaze tripped over Remus’ shoulder. The sudden anger in his eyes made Remus take a step back — his head reeling, feeling stunned, almost sick, with the unfolding of events. He drew in breath to ask what was wrong but Sirius was already pushing past him and when Remus turned around in the lazy golden light he saw Snape half-hidden in a corner behind them. He’d evidently by his expression seen and heard most if not all of what had gone on — there was a nasty malicious hunger there even as Sirius walked up to him with murder in his eyes.

“You fucking creep,” Sirius said, loudly, “what the hell were you doing back there, spying on us.” He was half a head taller than Snape naturally but Snape’s shoulders bowed inwards and made the height difference much more obvious. He shrugged and cut a glance at Remus who with sudden lightning shock remembered mentioning his lycanthropy at multiple points during the conversation. Amidst the swirling confusion in his brain — Sirius had _kissed_ him, and he’d allowed it — he felt his cheeks heating up.

“I’m allowed to go into any of the shops too,” Snape said, defensive, annoyed. “Hogsmeade isn’t only yours.”

“You’re a fucking voyeur, is what you are,” Sirius said. “I always knew you were secretly wanking off to visions of me in your sleep — ”

“God, Black, you are so full of it.” Again Snape looked at Remus; there was so much derision and scorn in his eyes it was a little startling. “You must really hate yourself,” he said, “if you want to fuck around with that.”

Something in Remus’ stomach tightened into a fist. He pressed his lips together very tightly. He could still feel the echo of Sirius’ mouth on his.

“Of course,” Snape continued, almost calmly, “considering your condition I suppose you don’t have much room to complain about who lowers their standards enough to touch you — ”

Sirius’ hex shot out of his wand unspoken and sort of bluish in the golden light. It hit Snape square in the chest and made him stagger backwards and though his mouth was still working now nothing came out of it except ragged little tweets like birdcall. Feathers were growing already along the sides of his neck and disappearing into the greasy locks of his hair. His eyes wide with panic he reached up and grasped at his face where something hard and shell-like was sprouting from his mouth.

“Don’t fucking talk to him that way,” Sirius snarled. “Don’t talk at all.”

Snape was red with humiliation and anger underneath the feathers and the beak. He shoved past Sirius and Remus with something maliciously bright in his eyes and pushed out the door just as the shopkeeper reappeared from his mysterious hideout. His eyes flicked from the ringing shop bells to Sirius whose wand was still out to Remus whose anger was slowly building like the poisons they sometimes concocted in Slughorn’s class. There was a bitter taste in his mouth from the tea Sirius had drunk. His hands were shaking.

“What’s going on here?” the shopkeeper asked.

“Nothing,” Sirius said, without taking his eyes off Remus’ face. The shopkeeper looked between them again, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug — his eyes were red from the smoke — and sank into his chair. On the turntable the record was still spinning.

“Scrawny little fuck,” Sirius spat. “I’ll fuckin’ get him for this, wait and see — ”

“What the fuck is wrong with you, why would you do something like that?” Remus blurted. Sirius paused and looked at him askance.

“Excuse me?”

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose where the skin had after their fight in September hardened over into a tight little knot. “Hexing him when he’s already seen and heard — everything. All he has to do is open his mouth to one, just one of your Slytherin housemates and tell — ”

“No one’s going to believe _Snape,_ ” Sirius said, derisive.

“Speak for your whole house now, do you.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Just trying to make things easier for you, Lupin — ”

“Well, I don’t need that,” Remus said, “and I don’t need you to defend me.” He folded his arms across his chest; otherwise it felt like he couldn’t keep himself contained. Sirius blinked at him, then he laughed once, coldly.

“Is that what you think I was doing? Defending you?”

Remus remembered the way his wrists had skidded against the inside of the pewter cauldron when his magic had flared hotly out of him in the dungeons. “How else was I supposed to interpret it when you said ‘don’t fucking talk to him that way.’ And after all that shit you’ve been saying all term about me, about what I am.” Briefly he unlocked his arms so as to drag his fingers through his hair. “God, Sirius, of all the, the rash decisions to make right now — ”

“Right, sorry, I forgot, the two of you are so close — ”

“What I’m _saying —_ ” he took a breath — “what I’m telling you is that was a dumb fucking thing, hurting him, giving him an excuse to retaliate, tell everyone he saw the Black family scion and a half-blood werewolf making out in Hogsmeade.”

Sirius’ expression tightened minutely at the corners.

“You don’t need that,” Remus said. “And I don’t need your help in fending off assholes like Snape, I’ve gotten by just fine for sixteen years without you on that front.”

“He wouldn’t dare say shit,” Sirius said, in a strange tone.

“Don’t you think you made it a lot worse than it already was — ”

“I think I can do as I damn well please with that little shit,” Sirius said, “and I think you’ll be thanking me later once he keeps his mouth shut about what he saw and heard today.”

Remus blew a breath out his nose. “I’ll thank you when you finally fucking leave me alone,” he said, and without waiting for any type of response pushed past Sirius and went to purchase the record. He was sure Lily already owned this one, or else James did, but if he didn’t get out of there he’d likely strangle Sirius, or perhaps kiss him again — he couldn’t decide which would be worse. His heart was still beating far too quickly. Sirius’ confidence in people refusing to listen to Snape aside, if he opened his mouth — _when_ he opened his mouth things would go downhill very rapidly. Snape knowing was tantamount to Remus’ expulsion. He might as well start packing a bag the minute he returned.

When he left the shop the temperature was rapidly dropping. As he walked down the street back towards the school his mind kept skipping back to the way Sirius had looked, both when Snape had shown up and when Remus had left, standing in the back shelves, black anger (Black anger) lingering in his eyes. Also the hatred on Snape’s face. The tension coiling serpentine between them —

The toast —

He shivered. Touched his mouth. Overhead the clouds gathered like spun wool to disperse snow. He could feel the moon even from the other side of the world pulling at his bones.


	5. Chapter 5

**_February 1980_ **

The Portkey which Dumbledore had sent with his owl had rested now for three nights upon the mantelpiece. It was an old tarnished copper plate which glinted green in certain light. Now as the time came close to the Order meeting it began to glow and vibrate like a Muggle alarm reminding him: now you must go and eviscerate yourself before the court. Now you must go and explain to James and Lily that you have sold them out, and their unborn son.

Not long after Sirius had left Remus sent Greyback an owl suggesting the attack happen in April. _That gives us all an extra month to plan and incentivize._ Greyback’s response was almost immediate, in messy strange handwriting, on parchment which stank of blood and else — _We will be waiting._ The old self-hatred curdled in his stomach. He tried imagining how he would apologize and found he could not. He wanted to blame Dumbledore for putting him in this position in the first place but he had made the decision himself to bring James and Lily and the pack all together. It was the same as it had ever been — he was a monster, he could not live past society’s expectations of him. He had not yet exhausted his capacity for evil since December 1976.

He put his hand on the Portkey, drew in three great shuddering breaths, and felt it tug him away. When he opened his eyes after the tight squeezing pull through red-dark emptiness he found himself in Dorcas and Marlene’s flat. They still had their fairy lights strung along the walls and strange pale knickknacks on the counters — tiny lavender or blue animals carved from clay and glazed. Dorcas was attempting to braid about five strands of Lily’s hair and the Prewitt brothers were sharing a joint with Fenwick and James was talking to Peter in undertones at the kitchen sink. When Remus appeared they went quiet, and everyone kind of glanced up and then away again. Momentarily Dumbledore emerged from the Floo. When he saw Remus something went cold and hard in his eyes as flint. Then he smiled.

“Remus,” he said. “Thank you for joining us. You’re right on time.”

Remus set his Portkey down on a table beside the door. His whole self felt vibrating and uneasy. He imagined he felt the wolf’s hackles rising — then he said, “I have, um, that is — ”

“Just a moment,” Dumbledore said, as though he were chastising a child. Remus waited biting his lip feeling flushed and embarrassed while Dumbledore called the meeting to order and counted off everyone in the room. Remus noticed the way Lily sat with her hand on her stomach which had begun to protrude over her waistband. Dorcas moved about the room offering everyone tea from a chipped china pot covered in roses. At last Dumbledore cleared his throat and said:

“And joining us today is Remus Lupin, our nominal member, with news of his own.”

As though Remus had been invited to the meeting to tell them Quidditch World Cup scores. He saw out of the corner of his eye James watching him from the kitchen. He remembered in their third year when James had joined the Quidditch team — he’d been hit in the nose by a Bludger his first game, and Remus had gone to visit him in hospital after the fact. They’d joked together about the stag being able to gore every single player on the opposing team.

“So, um — as I’m sure you’re all aware, He Who Must Not Be Named knows about the prophecy.”

Nods all around. The expression in Lily’s eyes was tight and scared and very, very angry.

“Well, he… in order to get rid of the baby he wants it killed, and he wants Greyback’s pack — ”

“Your pack,” he heard Gideon mutter to Fabian.

“ — to be the ones to do it. And so Greyback told me and I — fuck.” He found he could not look at them, at any of them, James and Lily least of all. He remembered learning they were married with a dull sense of shock, thinking, I should’ve been there, I should’ve been one of the groomsmen. I should’ve embarrassed James with a speech about his prongs.

“Go on,” Dumbledore prompted, after a moment. Remus recognized the cruelty in what he’d done — he’d had three days to tell them, and he had not.

“Greyback told me You Know Who wants the pack to murder James and Lily and I said I’d be the one to bring, to make it all happen. I said I’d take James and Lily to my parents’ house and then I’d take the pack there and let them — ” He found he could not finish the sentence. His face felt drained of blood in the way it did before he was going to vomit. To his right he heard Lily making strange sounds like she was trying very hard not to cry. In the kitchen — he barely dared glance up — James’ face was like stone.

“Your parents are dead though,” said Peter, into the strained bleak silence. “How could you — ”

“The other,” Remus said — his eyes ached. He felt he could burst something apart with his anger — his anger and his helplessness. _Rage, rage against the dying of the light._ “The one in Derbyshire.”

The four of them drinking butterbeer in the early splitting dawn in the field beyond the back porch. Lily had stolen a pack of cigarettes from her father’s desk drawer before leaving home and they passed them around feeling very adult. War was on the horizon but none of them had been concerned with it at the time.

“Oh,” said Peter. “Right.” He frowned at his feet, and then at James.

“Did you set up a specific date?” Dumbledore asked. His voice was like ice in the shattering — around the room everyone was so quiet except for Lily who was still staring at Remus with her hand over her mouth and the tears spilling over her pale lashes.

“The full moon in April,” Remus said, quietly. “So the thirtieth.”

“That’s over two months away — ” began Mary Macdonald uncertainly.

“What does that matter?” Fenwick interrupted. He was so angry the dark of his eyes was like ember. “Lupin betrayed us like the fucking coward he is — ”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Remus snapped, though of course that was untrue — if he’d been without a choice he could’ve looked James in the eye. He could have walked over to Lily and congratulated her and offered to buy beanies for the baby. “Greyback has to think I’m — ”

“Yes, yes,” Fenwick said, “your fucking werewolf master has to think you’re on his side, we all know, you’re so special because you’re doing so much double agent work — ”

“Benjamin,” Dumbledore said.

“Sorry, Albus, it’s just hard for me or any of us really to grasp the concept of like, whose side Lupin is really on — ”

“You speak for everyone here now, do you,” Remus said, sarcastically. But his heart was trembling terribly in his throat because he knew it was the truth. Indeed Fenwick just looked at him like he’d shit on the carpet. Then Dumbledore said:

“Remus is of course on our side, Mr. Fenwick. Surely you remember that it was I who placed him in the pack to begin with.”

Dumbledore had first told them at the first Order meeting Remus ever attended — December 1978. He’d taken the Portkey the old man had owled him with his shoulder torn open, mouth cut, the scent of Greyback still in his clothes, and found himself in Frank Longbottom’s flat. There were posters of The Who on his walls which had been bewitched to move. The cat he’d had at Hogwarts lay curled up on his windowsill — it arched its back when Remus appeared, and hissed, and ran from the room. The Order — his friends, people he hadn’t seen at that time in two years — were staring despite Remus being sure Dumbledore had told them he was coming. Lily gave him a very quick very tight smile and then looked away. Peter did not look at him at all.

“What are you doing here?” Fenwick had asked. Fletcher — in those days Fletcher was still coming to meetings — laughed overloud because he was very high on coke. Remus mumbled something and Dumbledore said:

“Remus runs interference between us and Greyback. He is a spy within the pack. He will come to Order meetings when he has vital information.” Remus was sure he didn’t miss the way everyone looked at each other. But no one said anything else.

Remus told them what was at the time perhaps the most important thing he’d learned from running with the pack which was that Greyback was turning children for Voldemort. “And for himself,” he said, leaning against Frank’s counter, nausea swirling. “He likes it, he likes — he thinks it’s sport. You Know Who wants them young enough he can put his ideologies in their heads without it fucking around with whatever they’ve been taught and Greyback likes it for the same.”

He saw James and Lily look at each other. Dumbledore thanked him for his information — blue eyes twinkling. Not long after he Apparated back to his own flat where he blacked out for roughly six hours. His headache would not go away for two days.

“I remember,” Fenwick muttered now, resentfully.

“So as unfortunate as these circumstances are you understand that Remus made this choice under duress.”

James was staring at Remus as though perhaps they had not grown up together. As though perhaps sometime between the Incident of ’76 and now Remus’ soul had undergone some type of transfiguration and become fused entirely with the wolf’s. Although frankly Remus understood better than any of them gathered here in their sanctimonious self-righteous bullshit that his soul and the wolf’s had always been interchangeable…

“April thirtieth,” he said.

“Yes,” said Remus, “but it won’t happen.”

“Sure,” said one of the twins. Marlene glared at him, but also she looked as though perhaps she wanted to laugh. Lily’s hand had drifted lower on her belly and she was watching Remus with her bright angry eyes.

James walked at last out of the kitchen, around to where Lily was. He sat beside her and took her hand. “What were you thinking,” he asked.

Remus swallowed. For no reason the introduction to “Run Through the Jungle” began playing in his head, the sharp warning-shot drag of the guitar like a distorted siren, and the cymbals like cicadas in the grass. “You stay at your safehouse,” he said, “this month and next. When I bring Greyback to Derbyshire I can tell him — ” Of course there would be nothing really to tell him, the minute the pack arrived at the cottage and James and Lily were absent they would kill him likely before the moon had even risen — “I’ll just say you must have figured it out and left.”

“And then what,” said James flatly. “You’ll just keep coming up with excuses until Lily’s had the baby?”

Remus glanced at Dumbledore. As ever during Order meetings he was silent. Remus wondered how he found the time to leave the school. “We can — you can go to a different safehouse. One with a secret keeper. Right?”

Silence.

“Look,” Remus said, desperately, “I know I got, I know I fucked up. I just want to fix it.”

Lily had folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not sitting around waiting for He Who Must Not Be Named to kill me or my child,” she said.

“He Who Must Not Be Named wouldn’t kill you,” Fenwick said, “it would be Remus Lupin’s fucking furry freak friends — ”

“I see no other alternative,” Dumbledore interrupted, loudly, as Remus’ wand slipped almost without his meaning to further down his sleeve. “As unfortunate as these circumstances may be the fact is that it’s done and there is no way to get out of it except by moving forward. Now, Mr. Lupin has bravely volunteered to lie to Fenrir once more, placing himself in jeopardy. Lily, we can place you and James in another safehouse during the month of April — ”

“He’s _my_ kid, Albus, I’m not — ”

“I’m afraid you must.” Dumbledore’s tone was more gentle and apologetic than Remus had heard it in years. He tried to gauge the sincerity of it but could not. “At least for the time being. Now that Voldemort knows of the prophecy there is nowhere truly safe until such time as he is vanquished. And none of us know when that will be.”

They were silent again. From the sink Peter was watching all of them; he hadn’t changed overmuch in nearly four years, blending in the background, mostly quiet. The twins looked irritated and stoned and Fenwick the same. Mary was biting her lip. Dorcas and Marlene were holding hands but trying to be subtle about it and Lily had stopped crying behind her open hand. Something in the set of James’ shoulders reminded Remus of the stag — the regal bearing of it. He wished for one wild moment that Sirius was here, instead of with the Death Eaters; that Sirius with his wild hair and handsome face could stand beside him, silver eyes flashing, and speak in his defense —

“All right,” James said at last, “we’ll stay at our place.” He glanced at Lily; she looked furious, but she nodded.

“What if Greyback doesn’t believe you,” she said to Remus.

He won’t, Remus thought. It had occurred to him that he was signing his death warrant in declaring this plan yet he could not — he could not do anything else. Perhaps his death would at last atone for what had happened almost four years ago.

“There’s no way he can prove where you’re staying,” he told her, “and anyway he can’t — if this fails he can’t tell You Know Who his suspicions, because then it’ll look like he fucked up too. So I think we’re okay.”

“You think,” she repeated dubiously.

“We’re okay,” he said, more firmly. So help him he was remembering — fourth year, he’d sprained his ankle the night of the full moon, and she’d flown into the hospital wing through a crack at the base of the window to retrieve dittany so as to keep him from needing to limp to the castle. Afterwards she’d sat with him while he’d waited for it to go into effect — they’d each missed their first class of the day, because the ankle was still tender even after it had healed. James and Peter had both come up with ridiculous excuses for them which the four of them had laughed about at lunch.

“All right,” said Dumbledore, when no one else spoke. “So it’s settled, then.” He smiled; it did not reach his eyes, but Remus didn’t think anyone else noticed. Turning to Dorcas he said, “How about some of that fine tea of yours?”

~

When they had been sleeping together perhaps three months Remus had gone to Sirius’ flat after a full moon feeling as ever drained of all except perhaps the barest threads of himself which clung to his consciousness in golden gossamer strands. Sirius had taken to Apparating to Remus’ location to get him because it was difficult for Remus to use that much energy. He would bring clothes and have food at his house and Remus was very confused about how to feel about it all — he remembered long ago, Sirius had said something about feeding strays to bring them back…

He’d lain on the couch feeling all his bones move trying to adjust themselves after the night’s wrongness and his sore muscles and a fresh wound on his arm which Sirius had stopped its bleeding shortly after his arrival at the cairn. Sirius came in with toast spread with blackberry jam and sat watching as Remus drew his knees up to himself and ate slowly, gingerly. One of his thumbs felt like the adjacent part of the paw had been crushed in something.

When Remus finished his food Sirius wrapped a cold hand around his ankle and began stroking over the bone. “I’m tired,” Remus muttered, but he did not really mean it — or rather he was tired, he was always tired, but he didn’t much care. Sirius sucked him off in what he probably thought was a massive display of chivalry and then jerked himself off while Remus watched half-asleep pressing the crook of his pinky into the corner of Sirius’ mouth. There was something very artistic about Sirius when he came — he would cant his head back and sigh and his teeth would grit like he was in pain. It was very overdramatic as was everything about Sirius yet Remus found he didn’t mind.

“You want some music on or something?” Sirius asked, after a little while. He’d gotten the house elf to bring them a wet rag — Remus tried not to think about how strange it was, nor about how likely it was something Sirius had learned by example — and wiped himself off then Remus because he never swallowed. They were sitting not quite touching and Remus was dizzy with exhaustion. Sirius kept staring at the new scar on his arm.

“All right,” Remus said. Sirius got up and put on Resonance Fortescue’s _Prelude No. 3._ It was a pretty haunting piece like being stalked by beautiful deadly things in the forest. Sirius came back and sat again on the couch. After a little while he turned the volume down with magic and looked at Remus and said:

“I want to — I think you should know why I joined.”

Remus stared at the portrait of Walburga Black which hung over the mantelpiece. Sirius had had to bewitch it to remain perpetually silent on account of the frequency with which Remus came over. “I can guess.”

“No, no you can’t, really.”

“All right,” said Remus — sometimes it felt like indulging Sirius was just another one of his jobs. “Enlighten me, then.”

Sirius reached into the pocket of his discarded trousers for his cigarettes. He offered one to Remus and lit both of them with fire from his palm. Remus wondered abstractly what Voldemort thought of Sirius showing up to Death Eater meetings smelling like smoke.

“It was — after I got suspended,” Sirius said. “I was at Grimmauld Place for like three weeks and my parents were furious — ”

“With you?”

“No, of course not. With the board of directors, and the Ministry. And with Dumbledore.”

Of course not. Remus took a drag on his cigarette so he wouldn’t say anything.

“Anyway one evening it was all of us there — my parents and my cousins and myself, we were having dinner, and — he came to the door.”

“‘He’?” Remus said, though he already knew.

Sirius flecked ash off his lower lip. “Voldemort.”

“Right.” There was a pause. “I didn’t know he was in the habit of, of making house calls — ”

“He isn’t. So of course it was some great bloody honor, my parents fell over themselves trying to, I don’t know, make him comfortable, and Bella was — well anyway that’s irrelevant because what happened was that Voldemort sat at our table and took dragonsteak from my father — ”

“He eats?”

“I guess sometimes. He told me that he knew… you know, what had happened, and why I wasn’t in school. He said something about, at my age it was vital I learn all I could, and especially since he was about to lead the world into glory… and he said that he could put me back in — in the system. If I wanted him to.”

On the Victrola the violins had reached a crescendo. Sirius exhaled smoke. Then he said:

“So in the end it wasn’t just my family’s money. It was him, too. He has, I don’t know, strings in the Ministry, which he pulled, and I was back at Hogwarts by the next Thursday.”

“You could have said no,” Remus said, though it was a monumentally stupid thing to say, because of course Sirius couldn’t have. And indeed he just looked at him with the slate gray eyes piercing and annoyed and then he said:

“I stayed the rest of sixth year and up until November of seventh. Then I got an owl from my mother requesting I come home immediately on account of some family emergency and I got the okay from Dumbledore but when I got to the house he was there again and he said this time he wanted to do something else for me. Or I guess he wanted me to do something for him. Which was — ” He held out his left arm instead of speaking. Remus at that point had seen the mark clearly only once — the rest of the time in flashes when they slept together. It was never very strong because usually they only fucked around naked during the other parts of the month, when there were no Death Eater meetings. Now he rolled Sirius’ sleeve up, the soft flannel of it. It was intimate enough to make him a little uncomfortable; he could hear Sirius breathing steadily, and smell the warmth of him beneath the cigarettes. The mark was like ink against his skin. The pitch head of the snake emerging from the skull’s mouth. Beneath it his veins were dusky blue, almost indigo.

“So I dropped out,” Sirius said, “because I was eighteen by then and it really didn’t matter, and I joined up.”

Remus traced the skin around the mark. He heard Sirius’ breath catch in his throat in a way that likely was supposed to go unnoticed. “And are you happy?” he asked.

“Happy?”

“Well, satisfied. With your choice.”

“Sure, yeah.” Sirius shrugged and Remus’ hand slipped down towards his wrist where the pulse was beating rapidly. He pressed out his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray beside the couch and Vanished it all. There was a devil’s trill on the Victrola now. “It beats having sat through another semester of classes, I suppose.”

Remus felt his mouth twist. Must be easier to say when it was your decision, he almost said, except he couldn’t, because of course it hadn’t been entirely Sirius’ decision at all. Instead he said:

“Dumbledore treated — that is, when he had me join up with Greyback, it was like, he acted as though it was something I owed him. For what he did after ’76.” They had both been pulled in certain directions. He could not decide if it made it easier to forgive Sirius for what had happened.

“And are you satisfied?” Sirius asked. “With your choice?”

Blood in his teeth every month. The smell of Greyback on his clothes, in his hair. The feeling like he would never be able to step away from it, even when the war was over, and like he would never be trusted… like he would never again trust himself.

“It wasn’t really a choice,” he said. His thumb was still on Sirius’ radial artery. “But I suppose.”

~

After the meeting the members of the Order gradually dispersed from Dorcas and Marlene’s flat with reluctant waves. Remus noticed none of them said goodbye to one another. On his way out the door James stopped to give Lily time to shrug into her coat and placed a hand on Remus’ arm.

“If you fuck this up,” he said.

“I won’t,” Remus said. So help him he still could not meet James’ eyes. After a little while James put his arm around Lily’s shoulders and led her out. Remus made sure he was one of the last to leave yet still on his way down the street Dumbledore caught him by the elbow.

“Remus,” he said. “A word?”

They stepped together into a side alley. There was dirty snow melting in corners behind trashcans and dripping into the drain. The sound of it like cars rushing down the highway.

“You understand,” Dumbledore said, “that I will not be able to protect you should either Greyback or Voldemort realize the truth.”

“I understand,” said Remus. Unspoken: it hasn’t been your priority to protect me since 1977. He remembered questioning Dumbledore about the safety of joining the pack, and how Dumbledore hadn’t really answered him.

“You will run with the pack as usual this upcoming month,” Dumbledore said. “We will ensure the safety of James and Lily Potter and their son.”

Remus drew in a breath. _I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride…_ “Yes,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

Dumbledore looked at him, eyes twinkling. “I should think you’d be glad to have the burden of keeping the Potters safe off your shoulders,” he said. “Considering your past track record — ”

It was easily the cruelest thing Dumbledore had ever said to him. Remus felt the color rise in his cheeks. Mouth tense, he said, “I’m willing to do whatever in service of the cause.”

“Excellent,” said Dumbledore. He clasped Remus’ shoulder and turned towards the street. “Well, assuming things go as you have so carefully planned, I will see you after the April full moon so as to discuss the next stratagems with regards to our endeavor.”

“Yes,” said Remus, “all right.” He watched Dumbledore walk down the street. In the far distance he heard the percussive rumble of thunder.

~

The week following he Floo’d Greyback about the plan. “I told the Order it was happening in May,” he lied, “but privately I told James and Lily to come to my safehouse in April. Like we agreed on.”

Greyback smiled; there was grist caught in his teeth. “Once we are rid of the child he will exonerate you — he will induct you into a grander world than they could have ever dreamed for you. For any of us.”

“I want that, yes,” Remus said.

“We will at last be free to indoctrinate — we will no longer have to hide our true selves from the wizarding world. We will be allocated a place in his society and become part of something larger.”

A small part of Remus he did not especially like said that he would accept it if Voldemort could promise, perhaps, that after the war was over he would no longer need to owe anyone anything, no longer owe allegiance to anyone, nor favors, nor his blood and time and sweat, his dignity and his sanity both of which he’d been giving away freely since 1976. But he knew that if Voldemort won the war he would ask for allegiance to himself first. And that werewolves would be shunted into whatever place just before Muggles. Instead of answering he only nodded, and gave Greyback a small, tight smile before cutting the connection. He tried to sob but could not. He put on _The Piper At the Gates of Dawn —_ it had been his father’s favorite album for years. _Lime and limpid green…_ It felt like he closed his eyes to sleep and when he woke it was the twenty-ninth. It was early but he could summon neither the energy nor the will to get up. There was nothing — he would go transform amidst those who believed him a traitor to one side, and then come back to report to those who believed him a traitor to the other. When he himself could not separate the one from the other.

At last he could no longer ignore the moon stretching and pulling at his bones. He got up and dressed — flannel and jeans, easy to remove. It was maybe an hour before sunset. He had a coffee sitting at his kitchen table, knee jittering painfully beneath the wood. Something in his jaw was stretching —

After a time the coffee wore off and Remus stood, joints cracking, every part of himself feeling wrong and uneven. There was a pack of cigarettes Sirius had sent on the counter via owl along with a brief letter which said: _R — Enjoy the, like — one thing that you don’t have to owe anyone. See you soon._ He lit one on the stove because he had never been able to perfect the trick Sirius had of producing fire in his hands. Then he Disapparated.  

~

The pack was staying on the Scottish coast. There was an abandoned lighthouse Greyback had allegedly discovered while attempting to terrorize and turn the town’s children back in ’63. Remus landed on his knees on the cold and rocky beach directly to its east. His palms skidded upon gravel. The wind was sharp and cruel upon his skin.

He noticed first the silence. Silence except for the seabirds crying. The tide had come in and the water was freezing about his bare ankles. He looked around — there was no one. There was no one.

He understood the pack had not come. It was a pretty thought to assume Greyback had simply lied to him about their locale but he knew Greyback wanted Remus under his thumb monthly to assure himself that Remus was not betraying him. The pack had not come because they were elsewhere. And if the pack were elsewhere there was only one possible explanation for where they could be.

He tried desperately to Disapparate but the moon was already rising below the horizon and pulling upon his joints like marionette strings. As the wolf took his consciousness he could hear himself sobbing, hard enough that it sounded like screams.


	6. Chapter 6

**_December 1976_ **

“Remus,” Lily said, in a voice which was rapidly losing patience, “don’t be daft, we’re not going to leave you alone tonight just because of the stupid dance.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, though he’d been cutting his eyes for the last five minutes down the table towards Mary Macdonald, who was talking with Frank Longbottom in an undertone about how likely he thought it that they could all of them sneak off together and smoke a joint on the Quidditch pitch during the festivities.

“Oi, speak for yourself, Evans,” James said, around a mouthful of toast and jam. “Maybe some of us already have a date in mind.”

“I’m sure your ‘date’ can pull you off in a broom closet in under ten minutes just as easily as she could’ve in the common room,” Lily said. “And then you can come out and join all of us in the Forest — ”

“Lily,” Remus interrupted, for about the fifth time that morning, “I really, really don’t mind.”

“See?” James gestured with his toast at Remus. “He keeps saying he doesn’t care, maybe you should respect his wishes.”

It had been like this for the better part of three days now. The Yule Ball fell this year on a full moon night and as such Lily was reticent to attend, primarily because she felt it would be grossly unfair to Remus. Remus, who rarely danced with anyone at the Yule Ball anyway, was surprised — he had (rather guiltily) not spoken in any real depth to his friends since Sirius had kissed him; really not since his and Sirius’ conversation in Hogsmeade. James and Peter of course didn’t seem overly concerned with leaving Remus alone for the night. Remus wasn’t sure if this was a mark of their confidence in him or something other — the fact that his last shifting with all of them had been back in September, and that though he’d promised it would only last a few months those months had become harder to bear than he’d realized. Often at night the dorm room was very cold and very quiet indeed.

Also, Remus still was unsure as to what Snape would do. As Sirius had predicted Snape had stayed quiet so far, but Remus had no idea how long that would last. He’d been on the receiving end of not a few glares and very cold looks across the Great Hall, as though somehow Remus was responsible for the bird hex Sirius had placed on Snape in the record shop. Lily had noticed; she’d been somewhat friends with Snape for all of their first and part of their second year, until it was revealed that she like James and Peter knew of Remus’ lycanthropy and was willing to do anything to keep it secret. Remus thought perhaps that was why she was so reluctant to go to the dance. But Snape wasn’t talking, and neither was Sirius — in fact Remus had not heard a single word from Sirius since the incident. He tried not to let it bother him. He tried not to remember the press of Sirius’ mouth to his. The cold touch of his lips. Between all of that and the stress of exams he was more than ready to have his monthly shifting alone, in the Room of Requirement, toast or no — like an animal crawling back to its hideout in the gutter.

Lily stabbed a piece of sausage with more force than necessary. “All I’m saying,” she began, and Remus said:

“I’ll be safe. I’ll be fine. I have somewhere to go where I won’t hurt or be hurt by anyone — Lils, I mean it,” when she opened her mouth, “just leave it, okay? Go have fun. In January things will go back to normal.” He hoped. He hoped he’d want them to.

She sighed. James shrugged; he said, “I’ll copy out the setlist for you; we can all listen again over the weekend or something.” His voice was odd; tight with something, annoyance perhaps, though Remus could not tell to what or to whom it was directed.

“I’m sorry I’ll miss whatever’s going on there,” he said, trying for — if not levity, then at least some alleviation of the tension, gesturing at Peter who still was staring with unabashed openness at Mary. Lily and James both laughed and James nudged Peter in the ribs.

“What?” Peter said, blinking abstractly, which made all three of them laugh harder.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Sirius, does it?” Lily asked, when James and Peter were distracted talking about whether or not Peter actually had a chance with Mary or any girl.

Remus bit the inside of his mouth. “No.”

She nodded. In the green of her eyes he could see she was unconvinced. But she said only, “All right,” and she said, “We’ll have a good Christmas together, at least.”

“Yes,” said Remus, listening in the dim murmur of voices to Sirius’ wild and raucous laughter one table over.

~

Around noon the pain behind his eyes and the stretched-out feeling of his skin became unbearable and so Remus begged off lunch and went instead to walk the grounds. The air was raw with unfallen snow. He considered going to the Quidditch pitch until he realized the Ravenclaw team was practicing. So he stuck to wandering amongst the ramparts with the frigid wind blowing against his hair and his bare skin, feeling a little like an overexposed photograph, feeling tired, feeling resigned. Werewolves were forty percent more likely to commit suicide before the age of twenty-five, he’d read somewhere once years ago. It was there, outside the high amber-glass windows of the choir room, that he stopped to adjust his scarf, and where Sirius found him.

“It’s ugly out here,” Sirius said.

Remus shifted his shoulders — sore with the press of the moon. He was leaning against one of the stone pillars. He wished — sometimes, often — the transformation was simply an all-day thing; that from midnight to midnight he would remain unconscious, unaware of this grasping flexing feeling, every muscle in him too tight, his stomach cramping, head swimming… It would be easier, to a degree, simply to lose his mind for twenty-four hours a month. Instead of the anticipation and the loss of focus.

Sirius removed from his robes a cigarette and lit it with magic — fire in his cupped palm, or in his fingertips, or something. He stood facing away from the wind so it would not extinguish itself and Remus watched at the ember glowing against the pale bloodless line of his lips. When he inhaled he did so exaggeratedly and his cheeks hollowed. He was very beautiful. Like a painting in some old-world museum. Remus wanted very badly to touch him.

“Want a hit?” Sirius asked, holding out the cigarette. Remus hesitated — then he took it. Their fingers brushed; Sirius’ were still warmish from the fire he’d conjured. The end of the cigarette tasted of his mouth. Remus exhaled smoke quietly; he closed his eyes. He felt Sirius standing closer to him, he felt him take the cigarette back and he felt him lean against Remus’ pillar. After over a month of no communication whatsoever to have Sirius’ shoulder brushing his was tantamount to real torture. Remus hated him — and himself — so much.

“You’re being quiet, even for you,” Sirius said, after a long time. Remus opened his eyes, feeling a little as though he’d fallen asleep; the cigarette had been crushed out underneath Sirius’ boot, and Sirius was watching at him out of the corners of his eyes. Mostly he was staring at the school, the reflection of shadows against the warped glass of the choir room.

“It’s the full moon tonight,” Remus said.

“Oh, right,” Sirius said. “So, uh — guess that means you aren’t going to the Yule Ball, then.”

Remus barely suppressed an eye roll. “Nope, just the Room of Requirement. Like last month. You’re more than welcome to join — ”

“I’m good, but thanks.”

“Bring your mother’s silver — ”

Sirius grinned. “So you do pay attention when I talk.”

“Only so I can listen for hints of you getting ready to shut up.”

Sirius pressed a hand over his heart. His nails were very ragged, sort of bloody around a few of the beds. Remus looked away, out towards the Forest. He wished he could run out there again. To wake with dirt in his nails and hair and the rat and the stag watching over him and the bird draping a thick woolen blanket over his shoulders —

“It’s too bad,” Sirius was saying. “You not going to the dance, I mean. How can I cause great scandal to my family unless someone takes a photo of us snogging in the broom closet during Elocution Fenwhistle’s _Rhapsody in D Minor?”_

Remus snorted without meaning to. “I’m sure you’ll find a way,” he said, pressing the image out of his mind with some force.

Sirius shrugged and brought the hangnail of one thumb up to bite. “Won’t be as fun, though,” he said, and let his eyes fall pointedly down to the inseam of Remus’ trousers.

Remus exhaled. “Look,” he said — hyperaware of the moon’s position on the other side of the world, the twisting pull of it, tides rising — “have you heard anything from Snape?”

“Snape?” Sirius scoffed. “I don’t really make it a practice of — ”

“Just, have you heard him say anything,” Remus said.

Something brief and strange passed through the cold water of Sirius’ eyes. “No,” he said. “He’s scared shitless to talk, of course. Thinks I’m going to turn him into another great squawking bird if he does.”

“You’re confident in that, then. That he won’t talk.”

“As much as I am in anything.” So very confident, then. Remus pinched the webbing between his thumb and forefinger and with the sensitivity of his skin it ached dully into his palm long after he let go.

“Anyway,” Sirius said, like plowing through fields with his words, “since Snape’s not going to talk I suppose after tonight we could — ”

“No,” Remus said, though he desperately wanted to say otherwise, “I don’t think so.”

There was the knife-edge of something in Sirius’ smile. “You can stop pretending you don’t want me, Lupin,” he said. “We both know how you starved for me in that record shop — ”

“ _Starved_ for you — ”

“All aching, pressing into me — ”

It was too much. “I can tell how much it meant to you, then,” Remus said, “considering you’ve gone back to ignoring me completely for the last month — ”

“What do you care, unless you want something — ”

“I don’t want anything from an arrogant twat like you, always going on about the same shit, like a, like a dog with a bone — ”

“Interesting metaphor.”

“You haven’t let this subject go since September, Sirius.” Remus watched the pale sun make a weak attempt at breaking through the clouds. “I’m sick of listening to it.”

“Fuck me and you won’t have to.”

Something snapped in Remus’ brain: the exhaustion of the full moon day, the strain between himself and his friends, the aching want he felt, his desire to grasp Sirius’ jaw and press their cold chapped mouths together. “ _Merlin,_ ” he burst out. “Your parents must’ve not even noticed your brother dying; you prattle on enough for two as it is.”

It was immediately too far. The gray of Sirius’ eyes flashed like apocryphal lightning in an ash storm at the end of the world. The pupils seemed to swallow what little pale color was left within them. He stepped back, his fingers flexing in his robes for his wand; Remus felt for his own, feeling sick, coldly triumphant, furious. It was not something he would have normally so much as thought, it was more along the lines of something James might’ve said, but it was there. It was there and all Remus could think was, at last finally perhaps he’ll leave me alone. Sirius was breathing raggedly; his wand hand was shaking. Remus waited for the hexes to start flying. Then shockingly Sirius took a step back. His mouth worked for several seconds. Then he said:

“You’ll be in the Room of Requirement tonight?” and the shift of subject was so abrupt and so unexpected that Remus could only nod.

“I already told you — ”

“Shut up.” Sirius’ mouth was tight. “You — _fuck,_ Lupin.” Remus could see where his jaw was gritted and the teeth grinding together like millstone. His eyes were reddish at the corners as he turned on his heel — the leather scraping dully into the concrete — and started off.

“Sirius,” Remus said, “you can’t actually come — ”

“ _Silencio,_ ” Sirius snarled, pointing his wand over his shoulder. The spell felt like someone forcing too much air into the throat; Remus choked, and then retched because his muscles were already too tight, and by the time he was able to straighten up Sirius had disappeared entirely.

~

Sitting on the floor of the Room waiting for the moon to come over the horizon Remus thought of the Forest, and of the last time they’d run there together, himself and James and the others. It had been in September, before everything, before the class with Slughorn and the potion and Sirius’ admission which was not so much an admission as a threat. James laughing had brought out his record player shrunk down to fit into his pocket and they’d played The Stooges’ _Raw Power_ at the very edge of the Forest which was as far as they could go without arousing suspicion so as to hype them up — _I’m a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm, I’m the runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb._ The last song Remus remembered hearing was “Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell”; the stag and the rat had already come out, Lily was watching them with her nails painted lilac — it clashed not unattractively with her hair — and the usual worry in her eyes. Remus felt the change come over him like going under Muggle anesthesia.

When he woke she was singing to him, an Irish lullaby her grandmother had taught her. The rat was asleep between the stag’s antlers. She’d changed already back to human so as to drape the blanket more carefully around his shoulders and he asked her — voice torn open — wasn’t she worried he’d hurt her?

“Just before dawn you go — sort of soft,” she explained. “Like a dog more than a wolf. You bite your paws a lot and whine and worry at the ground and then you lay down and then you change. I never take off the bird until you’re at that stage.”

Remus hadn’t really known what to say to that. He ran his thumb over his knuckles where indeed the skin was broken and ragged in places. Beside him the rat made a little snuffling noise in its sleep.

Then Lily said, “I don’t think you’d hurt me, anyway. Or any of us.”

He was too tired and too sore to want to argue. “No?”

“I think you’d recognize us,” she said. “Or anyway some part of you would. You know us as animals. There’s no reason to think — ”

“All the same,” Remus said, closing his eyes, “let’s not test it.” But he’d thought about it, on and off, for a while afterwards — wondering what it might be like to be himself, wholly, within the wolf, and to sit with his friends at a hearth and laugh a doggish laugh while they joked and sleep with his paws tucked underneath himself. Wolfsbane was supposed to achieve similar to the desired effect but Remus didn’t want to approach Dumbledore and ask if he could request a dose from St. Mungo’s. Then of course the incident in Slughorn’s class… Thusly the whole thing passed from his mind.

But he wondered now, in the Room, if the wolf would recognize Sirius. Surely even the animal mind would know those eyes, and that laugh. He wondered if the wolf would remember the way Sirius treated him and want to kill him, or if it would lay at his feet in subservience, thinking of the toast and the kiss and the way Sirius’ face had shifted when Remus had brought up his brother —

He winced, remembering. Tomorrow perhaps he would apologize. Or next week — after all it was nothing Sirius hadn’t deserved to hear.

Seven floors down he swore he heard the music start up. He closed his eyes and waited for the pale tug of moonlight.

~

At first upon waking it felt not dissimilar to any number of nights spent in the woods. His hands hurt and his ribs hurt and his head hurt and his arms and legs and back and neck and shoulders all hurt. There was something gritty caught in his teeth he did not recognize. Blood in the back of his throat. He lay quite still upon the floor wondering if he’d dreamed the last few months entirely — when he opened his eyes perhaps he would see the woods, the dawn slowly coming, and the rat waking with a stretch of its tail —

Instead what he saw made him roll quickly onto his stomach so he could vomit. The movement hurt so much he had to lay panting in his own sick afterwards, eyes stinging, jaw clenched. The further he strayed into consciousness the more aware he became of the pain — sensitive skin like he’d been bruised, and he was sure he’d broken a rib, and likely had a concussion based on the severity with which his skull pounded. Not that any of it mattered, because the minute he left the Room, the minute anyone saw this, he’d be taken before the Wizengamot and sentenced to life in Azkaban. And the Dementors would suck out his soul before he’d spent so much as one night in the cells.

He’d killed someone. The blood was viscous and congealing like pudding on the walls, in the creases of the fabric of the padded floor. The body itself lay mangled several feet away, the face torn out, the throat shredded, the clothes ripped apart and strewn about. The torso was gutted as though the wolf had in its eagerness to feed simply burrowed its way into the stomach. What was left of the legs stopped above the knees. One arm was gone entirely. The other had three remaining fingers attached to the hand which somehow was still clutching at a snapped wand.

The scarf lay beyond the head. Remus could see teeth marks at the edges; he wondered if the wolf had torn it from the throat first. He discovered only one of his legs would work properly when he tried to sit up and as such he had to crawl very slowly forward so that he could see —

His stomach lurched again. The remaining threads were badly mangled, but even in the dim light it was impossible not to see the way the green and silver of them contrasted so sharply with the searing red pool of blood in which they lay.

~

They brought him first to the hospital wing so he could be treated — broken leg, broken ribs, indeed a concussion as he’d suspected. Madam Pomfrey was rather less gentle than she’d been in the past with her ministrations and as Remus floated in and out of consciousness he was aware of the way she would not look at his face. Nor would she speak to him when he tried to ask, who was in the room with me? His voice hardly a voice at all. Briskly she put drops of dittany on his wounds and a special healing salve on his ribs which she could not mend with magic due to their fragility. Then she said:

“The Headmaster will take you to his office soon.” She sounded on the verge of tears. Remus wondered how many students already knew. How many staff. In his mind again and again he saw like from a horror film the bloody ruined face. He could not figure how someone had gotten into the Room with him. Then he thought perhaps whoever he’d attacked had been lucky in a way — at least they wouldn’t have to live with this. Cursed like this. Dead on their feet… There was a bruise on the inside of his thigh which had blossomed and several on his knees — in particular on the leg which previously had been broken, jarring dark crepuscular spreading across his bones — and on his arms, in the crooks of his elbows, like junkie markings. He could feel them on his ribs where the salve sat cold and wet and he could feel them on his face and his neck. He wondered, heart pounding, exactly what had gone on.

When Dumbledore arrived he stood momentarily over Remus’ bed looking down at him over the half-moon spectacles. His mouth twisted disapprovingly. Remus remembered with shocking clarity the way he’d said, after the first fight with Sirius, _I always do hate to see extreme conflict among students._ The wolf must’ve taken it as a personal challenge, he thought, and nearly laughed out loud — buildup of hysteria in his throat. He stared back, unspeaking — in his mind his father’s voice: _Your lycanthropy will supersede every action you make._ The last time he’d thought of that had been also in hospital. He reached up and pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and at last Dumbledore spoke:

“Can he be moved?” This was of course directed at Madam Pomfrey who had never left the room — likely she thought Remus would simply get up and go slaughter more students.

“Yes,” she said. “His bones should have healed enough by now.”

Dumbledore nodded and studied Remus for a moment more as though he were an interesting specimen behind glass. “Come with me, Remus,” he said at last, and Remus could tell something very terrible was about to happen because Dumbledore was trying so hard to make it obvious it wasn’t. He felt the weight of death settle in his stomach. He could still taste whoever he’d killed in his teeth. With effort — all his joints were stiff from the changing and the bruises and the healing potions which were still working — he stood and slid his feet into the soft slippers provided to each hospital patient. Madam Pomfrey had dressed him in the interim between the Room and the hospital in a soft set of pajamas. The whole thing seemed already rather hazy to him now. He wondered what would happen to his clothes, and to his wand, which of course was wrapped up in the bundle of them.

Reaching into his robes Dumbledore produced a very old battered coffee mug which read _World’s Greatest Dad!_ in faded lettering. “I think,” he said, “that at this juncture it would be rather unwise for you to walk down the hallway.”

So that confirmed that the students already knew. Remus felt the blood drain from his face and whatever in his stomach tightened further and he doubled up — knees protesting with violence — and vomited into the trashcan. Dumbledore Vanished it with a flick of his wand. Remus thought he heard him sigh.

“This will take us directly to my office,” Dumbledore said, indicating the mug. Slowly Remus straightened again and took hold of the handle with one trembling finger. With the other hand he attempted to wipe his mouth. Dumbledore must have set the Portkey to leave very quickly because not long afterwards he felt the familiar wrenching tug at his navel. The last thing he saw as he and the old man were swept away was Madam Pomfrey’s disapproving face.

In Dumbledore’s office it was very cold. Remus landed on his knees on the stone floor and it was only through great force of will that he managed to avoid vomiting again. The phoenix watched him with one baleful golden eye. Dumbledore walked around his desk and retrieved from its depths a colored afghan blanket which he gave to Remus, who wrapped it around his own shoulders before sinking into one of the overlarge leather chairs. Dumbledore himself sat in his chair beneath the portraits of the former headmasters some of whom were studying Remus with open distrust and dislike. He spread his hands out before him. He steepled them beneath his chin. Under the half-moon spectacles his eyes were shrewd and cold.

“Well,” he said, at last.

Remus bit his lower lip. The skin at the very center of it was already sore. He could taste the tannic flavor of blood.

“You are aware, I presume, of what you have done.”

Remus ran his tongue over his teeth. Aware. Yes. Like thrumming in his very fucking bones.

“You understand that your expulsion will be effective immediately.”

Remus closed his eyes. He remembered with strikingly calm clarity that he’d struggled to the door in the Room, leg bursting, everything sharp with pain — then along the wall had developed a fireplace with the greenish fire already sparking inside. When he’d stuck his head in he’d discovered it connected to the Floo in Dumbledore’s office.

“I’ve,” he began, and then stopped, spitting ash, his voice wrecked. Dumbledore was staring at him with a measure of surprise Remus had never seen in his face before. It was so early he was still in his dressing gown. “I’ve fucked up, Professor — ”

They’d all rushed up very quickly after, Dumbledore and Pomfrey and McGonagall, and Filch with his hungry eager eyes, and Slughorn, because Remus mentioned the green and silver scarf. McGonagall had made a soft sound into her hands when she saw the scene: the mangled body, and Remus crouched beside it, an animal at its kill, and his whole bare torso — he hadn’t been able to straighten up and retrieve his clothes — soaked still in blood and bruises and his own vomit. Slughorn and Filch had transported the body up in the air and out of the Room. After that everything had gone sort of gray — Remus supposed he’d gone briefly into shock.

“Remus.” Dumbledore’s voice was not ungentle. Remus forced himself to focus. “Do you understand — ”

“Yes,” said Remus.

“Until such a time as your guilt has been determined also you will not receive your wand,” Dumbledore said. “It will be kept in a safe location and either returned to you or snapped depending.”

Depending on if he went or not to Azkaban. Remus’ hands tightened in the folds of the blanket.

Dumbledore tapped the ends of his index fingers together. “There will be a trial.”

For some reason this had not occurred to Remus and he startled a little. The phoenix shifted on its perch at the movement and several of the portraits rustled as though alarmed. “A trial,” he repeated.

“Yes. For as I’m sure you are aware we cannot keep the death of a student quiet. In fact as we sit here Severus’ body is already — ”

Severus’ body. “Snape,” Remus breathed out. Something in his expression caused Dumbledore’s eyebrows to knit together. His eyes were very cold and calculating.

“Did no one tell you?” he asked.

A part of Remus’ brain which would later become quite adept at thought said, no, and you bloody well know they didn’t. But he was as yet only sixteen, and his throat was suddenly very dry. The unspoken part of him that had believed the body to be Sirius’ went very quiet. All he could do was shake his head.

“Ah,” said Dumbledore. “Well. Yes, I am afraid the body belongs — belonged, excuse me — to Severus Snape.” He straightened up and rested one finger momentarily on the edge of his crooked nose. “I’ll have to ask that you excuse me soon, so that I may go and speak to his parents about the — incident.”

The incident. As though perhaps Snape had blown something up in Slughorn’s class and suffered burns Madam Pomfrey could not heal. Inside his chest Remus felt something tightening. He thought of the Doors: _this is the end, beautiful friend…_ He pressed his hand against his mouth so he would not scream. He remembered how his greatest concern had once been that the other students would find out he was a werewolf and that his family would have to move.

“But while I am here,” Dumbledore continued, “I must ask you, Remus, to tell me how it is that this unfortunate sequence of events came to be in the first place.”

Remus cleared his throat. “What do you — ”

“You transformed inside the Room of Requirement,” Dumbledore said. There was a question in the slight arch of his eyebrow. “And somehow Severus wound up inside with you.”

“I didn’t let him in.”

Dumbledore didn’t say anything.

“I’m — we aren’t even friends, he would’ve never come up with me in the first place — ”

“Severus came to the hospital wing about a month ago under a rather well-done bird hex which it took Madam Pomfrey several minutes longer than average to remove. He said you and Sirius Black — ”

“Professor — ”

“ — were angry with him over an incident on which he refused to elaborate, and that Sirius performed the hex on him so he’d leave. I spoke myself with Mr. Black about this shortly after and he assured me that the problem was resolved. I see now that I should have also taken you aside — ”

“I didn’t do anything to Snape,” Remus said. His breath caught in his chest; humiliatingly, he realized he was going to cry. His hand against his mouth curled into a fist.

“His body was discovered beside you in a room you were not even supposed to have access to, so badly disfigured we had to run several different tests on it just to confirm the identity.” The voice like flint. The phoenix on its perch staring down at Remus.

“I didn’t — ” Remus swallowed. “I mean I didn’t let him in deliberately. I had no idea he was even — ”

He remembered the way Sirius had asked where he’d be the night of the full moon. And before that the way he’d said how sure he was Snape would never speak of what he’d seen in Hogsmeade. With cold certainty that hardly even felt like realization he knew Sirius had brought Snape to the Room. The same way he’d brought the toast. _Feeding strays…_ He pressed his forehead to the back of his wrist. Swallowed down sick.

“Why were you in the Room of Requirement to begin with?” Dumbledore asked. “Your transformations are supposed to take place — ”

“Ask Sirius,” Remus said. He was surprised at his voice, the force of anger in it.

“I am asking _you,”_ Dumbledore said. “Any testimony of Mr. Black’s will either be entered in during the trial or — ”

“He’d just lie,” Remus snapped. If he was going to be expelled he supposed it didn’t much matter what he said or how he said it. “He’d say that I was being manipulative and trying to get him in trouble, that he never meant to get involved with — don’t you see? He’d turn it around, he’d make it my fault.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve already told you, I didn’t intentionally kill Snape. I wouldn’t.”

“But the entire wizarding world will think you did.” Dumbledore sighed. “Dear boy — ” He had not called Remus nor anyone Remus knew that term in many years, and certainly not with real sincerity — “I am only trying to ascertain the truth. Because you are underage and because you are in my care I will be acting as your primary witness to this crime. I will need as many of the facts as I can gather so I can make a, shall we say, stellar argument in your defense.”

Remus bit his thumb, the ragged edge of the nail. The skin was still hot and overly sensitive and he tasted blood. Whether his own or left over from Snape’s body he wasn’t sure. It occurred to him that likely Dumbledore would be the only person who would believe a single thing he said — if indeed Dumbledore truly believed him at all. Lily, James, and Peter — all of them, Mary and Marlene and Dorcas and Frank and Alice, the Prewitt brothers, Fenwick… all of them now had no longer any reason to believe Remus about anything he said or did. And he himself was unsure as to the validity of his statements — for years knowing the wolf lived just beneath the surface of his conscious mind, waiting, and that so many had viewed him as a monster, as something other, and that now they had their proof, and he himself had never been sure, and now there was in fact blood, real blood on his hands. He had done the thing he most feared and even if it was Snape, Snape had been human. Remus flexed his hands against the blanket. How will you live with yourself, whispered a soft and sibilant voice within his mind that sounded suspiciously like Sirius. How will you go forward from here knowing what you are capable of.

“Yes,” he said, looking at Dumbledore’s shoulder — he could not meet his eyes. “I understand.”

Dumbledore looked satisfied. “Tell me what happened.”

~

Later Remus sat waiting still in Dumbledore’s office after the old man had departed from it — he was going to deliver the news to Snape’s parents in Spinner’s End; he didn’t think it would be safe for Remus to wander out. The expulsion papers would go through by the end of the day. Remus’ own parents would be contacted and likely there would be a meeting point for the three of them somewhere off the grounds so they could Apparate. Sitting still in the chair — the blanket now pooling around his hips — Remus closed his eyes and thought about what he’d been told:

Sirius had been at the Yule Ball for the entirety of the evening. Dumbledore had seen him personally several times getting punch and talking to girls with his friends Rosier and Mulciber. So of course had about half the student body, which meant Sirius had a solid alibi, which meant he’d planned this. Remus wondered what he’d said to Snape to get him to go up to the seventh floor before the dance. He wondered if any students had seen them talking and if they’d remember and/or testify if they had. He wished he could see Sirius now; likely he was downstairs in the Great Hall with the others having breakfast and “wondering” what had happened, saying he’d always known Remus was a little off. He wanted to see Sirius because it didn’t matter — he’d been expelled; he was sure he was headed for Azkaban just as soon as whatever farce of a trial was over. And so one more death wouldn’t make any difference.

“I have to ask,” Dumbledore had said, when Remus was finished explaining what had happened, “why did you go along with what Mr. Black told you? The two of you have never been friendly.”

Remus shrugged. Resolutely he did not touch his mouth, though the instinct was there. He had omitted that particular part of the story; he said only that Snape and Sirius had gotten into a fight in Hogsmeade, and Remus had been witness to it. He could not bear the idea of his relationship with Sirius coming up in the trial. More than that he could not bear the idea of telling Dumbledore about it.

“If you hide things from me, I cannot help you.”

“I’m not hiding anything,” Remus lied, and dug his thumbnail into the soft pad of his opposite hand until he felt the flesh give.

Now sitting in the chair with only the phoenix watching him Remus thought, at last I am what everyone has spent six years expecting of me. At last I no longer have to try and live up to expectations beyond my capacity. There was a bitter taste in the back of his throat. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to block the image of Snape’s body — the ruined flesh, the savagely ripped clothes. He wondered if the wolf had scented the graveyard smell of the Slytherin common room. He wondered what Snape had done to him, how long he’d fought, for Remus to come out of it as bruised as he did.

He wondered if Sirius’ intention had been for Snape to kill Remus, too.

He drew the blanket back around his chest. It smelled old, musty — parchment, ink, Darjeeling, blood, which Remus hoped was resultant only of his sitting here. For no reason he thought of the toast and began to laugh. Leaning against the arm of the chair he closed his eyes; he was so very tired. There was a muscle pulling in his neck. He remembered the green and silver scarf, and the fear —

The press of Sirius’ hand to his in the courtyard —

When he woke it was well after noon. McGonagall was in the doorway accompanied by a house-elf carrying his trunk. It took Remus several minutes to stand. The ends of the blanket were damp where he’d wept in his sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**_March 1980_ **

The dawn broke over the cold water. There was gravel stuck in the palms of Remus’ hands which were badly scraped from whatever he’d done to himself in the night and cuts on his arms and legs. Something sore in his shoulder which suggested perhaps he’d rammed himself against the lighthouse. The pinkish gradient of the sun coming over the horizon was turned a hellish red by the rime of blood in his left eye. He had a strange awareness kind of in the back of his mind that Azkaban was somewhere across the North Sea.

He rolled momentarily onto his back feeling like the sole survivor of some horrifying shipwreck. The gravel cut his skin, the bruises and the sore muscles. He closed his eyes to wait for Sirius. Then he remembered — Sirius wasn’t coming. He remembered Sirius had betrayed him a second time in his life and he had to roll very quickly onto his stomach to vomit. His head felt swimming — overhead the birds were screaming.

He wasn’t sure how Sirius had done it. Indeed he could not figure out how Sirius had convinced James and Lily to go to Derbyshire; in the back of his mind he understood there must have been a spy within the Order itself likely working side by side with Sirius but he could not consider that right now. Perhaps Voldemort had realized Remus was unreliable, and asked Sirius to take care of things himself. And so Sirius had told Greyback to go to Derbyshire a month early. He could imagine perhaps Greyback laughing because Remus’ lover was destroying his life in the same manipulative bored strokes he had done four years previous. Just for something to do. Just because he was a pureblood and part of Voldemort’s inner circle. Just because he could. And likely Sirius was laughing too. Likely Sirius had always only ever been laughing at him.

Eventually he managed to get himself to his feet when the sun had crested the horizon and sat a pale yellow circle in the soft grayish sky. He had not been able to get his clothes off in time; the scraps of them lay scattered around like dismal offerings. His wand was at the flat in Camden; he never brought it when he met with Greyback. He supposed that was monumentally stupid as now he would need it to duel and kill Sirius Black on his family’s fields in Derbyshire but certain things could not be helped. The feeling in him, the golden unspooling thread of his magic, was so hot with his anger he felt he could use the Killing Curse wandlessly. Or else he would just strangle Sirius to death with his bare hands.

He closed his eyes in the wind coming off the sea. He remembered Sirius and the delicate way he’d held Remus’ hand sometimes the mornings after the full moon when they’d gone to Hampstead and things had been especially bad. He usually had a Death Eater meeting to go to or else just nefarious other Dark deeds which he would not discuss but he would sit and heal the worst of Remus’ wounds with his wand and hold his hand on the dismal couch. Once Remus had drifted to sleep and woken with his head on Sirius’ shoulder. He’d thought at the time perhaps if things were never going to get better then neither would they get any worse. And all the time Sirius was just waiting —

He saw in his mind the silver flash of eyes. The green fields and the cottage. It hurt like tearing himself apart from the inside but he twisted his ankle, pressed into empty space.

~

Derbyshire washed over his eyes green and sparkling in the nascent sunlight. The cottage was perhaps one hundred yards from where he’d landed. He saw the skull and snake over it in grayish-green like almost mockery of the fields and he retched again, head spinning, hands on his knees, altogether wrung out from Apparition and the transformation which was still shaking out the last of his bones. He wondered which of Greyback’s had said the spell and then realized it must have been Greyback himself. He ran forward, bare feet in the cool dirt and the grass still wet with dew. There was a sharp wind cutting across the field but he hardly felt it.

They were all of them already gone. He could see the deep cut grooves they’d made with their claws and their teeth in the dirt and the grass marking it, perhaps some of the more wild ones while still human, laughing about it because it was Remus’ family’s property, and Remus was not there, and Remus was a fool… Closer to the door he saw the first spill of blood, the deep dark red like poison, long dried. He slowed. His heart felt like someone was trying to force it from his body with a fist. He was still naked but it felt — like the least important issue of this whole endeavor. He’d rather have his wand than clothes; the closer he got to the cottage the more sure he was there was someone still inside. Someone alive.

He rounded the corner. The door was ajar; there were bloody footprints of human origin leading to it; Remus imagined Lily, or perhaps James, running —

Inside the house it was cold. Cold seeping up from the bare flagstones and cold in the walls and cold on the furniture and cold in the fireplace where the coal had long since burned out and lay now dull and useless amidst the rotting wood. His mother’s picture on the mantelpiece was dust-covered and the glass cracked and stained with blood. There was blood on the table and on the couch; there was blood on the inside of the door; there was blood on the floor in the hearth on the divider that separated the primary living area from the kitchen —

Their bodies were still on the flagstones. The destruction had been almost meticulous and Remus wondered if Greyback or the others had for once taken Wolfsbane so they would be aware of their actions. James’ throat had been ripped out and Lily was battered about the face and arms; there were deep gouges in his chest where his heart had once been, and the obvious had been taken from her. Her stomach still held its roundness despite the gash across the lower half of it. Something viscous like maybe placental matter on the floor beside her. They’d been arranged by someone — almost lovingly, with her head on his shoulder. He was still clutching at his wand. When Remus vomited it was mostly acid. Then from behind him he heard the voice:

“Here.” It was Voldemort. He stood in the shadows behind the door. He was studying the scene with clinical appraisal as though considering making a purchase. He had long since lost any of whatever tenuous grasp remaining of humanity. Remus could see in his skull the brittle veins where they stood out against the nearly translucent skin. He was holding forth a ragged robe in his skeletal hands.  

Remus wanted to scream. But he found he could not so much as move except to turn and face him. The dawn growing ever brighter through the windows.

“Here,” said Voldemort again, almost pleasantly. “You must be cold.”

I will fucking kill you, Remus wanted to say. His voice wouldn’t work; his jaw felt wired shut. He thought of the Force in _Star Wars,_ which he’d seen exactly twice, summer ’77, the back alley movie theaters so hot even near midnight he’d had to sit with his legs astride two chairs so the sweat wouldn’t stick to the backs of his knees.

“Take the robe,” Voldemort said. “Your nakedness does not bother me, but it will surely bother them.”

Remus thought he meant James and Lily, but he was gazing out of the windows. Out of his control Remus felt his arm lift and take the robe and realized at some juncture Voldemort had wordlessly cast _Imperius._

“It’s a pity you weren’t here,” Voldemort said. “One of life’s greatest pleasures is witnessing an act of violence.” He pressed the tips of his horrible white fingers to the slit of his mouth. “But then I forget: you already have.”

Remus stood shivering — he’d lost again his ability to move once he’d pulled on the robe.

“In fact it was you yourself who initiated said act. Was it not? Answer me.” Remus felt his jaw unstick; he tried to say any number of things, but it was like what he supposed taking Veritaserum was like, and he could only say:

“No.”

A lifting of the skin where eyebrows should have been. “No?”

“No, it was — ” he had to fight his own throat — “it was Sirius.”

“Ah, yes.” Voldemort stepped out of the shadows and into the spread of light coming through the door like a spill of bluish milk. His eyes drifted downwards towards James and Lily’s bodies. The slaughter had happened so recently the flies hadn’t even come yet. “My most trusted follower.”

Unbidden an image came to Remus of Sirius some morning in Camden; he’d stayed late and fallen asleep on Remus’ bed rather than go back to Hampstead. His hair had pooled beneath his head on the pillow as he slept; he looked like a painting by Caravaggio. He felt or thought he felt Voldemort pulling at the image as though it were on a string and against the curse he thought, _Occlumens_ _._ Then he wondered why he was protecting Sirius at all.

“Regardless you yourself executed the plan with seamless perfection,” Voldemort was saying. “It has been for that exact reason that for the past two years you have been so well integrated within Fenrir Greyback’s pack. You are a killer at heart, Remus. You know this as well as I — no, there is no denying it, boy. It is what you are, just as all your kind. It is all you’re good for. Annihilation and destruction. Fortunately I have been able to utilize this to my liking.” He gestured at James and Lily. There were deep teeth marks in James’ right leg. “And with my primary threat extinguished I can now move on to the larger — the greatest threat of all: the threat to our purity.

“Consider, Remus: I understand that you feel sadness for your friends’ deaths. But I cannot abide by the mixing of blood. Even if the child the girl carried was not destined to be my destruction, she was still only the child of Muggles. And he only half a wizard. The generations cannot be diluted by tainted blood — the strain will weaken and eventually die out entirely. I will not allow that. I cannot.”

The horrifying thing was he sounded nearly apologetic. Again he glanced out the window. Then towards the bodies on the floor.

“She was lovely, your friend,” he said. “For a Muggleborn.”

He stepped closer still to Remus. He could have touched him if he reached out.

“You were not here,” he said. “Did you think your absence would go unnoticed?”

Again the tightness of his jaw was lifted, long enough so he could say, “No.”

“I will build my armies from your kind,” he said, “and others like you. I will gather the willing to me and cast them out to do more like this, like what you did — to kill for me everyone of impure blood. But I will not have dissention among my rankings.”

It occurred to Remus suddenly — the light flaring through the window, white against the glass — that Voldemort knew. He knew Remus had lied and he knew Remus had tried to save James and Lily’s lives. Whether Greyback had also known was less certain but there were only two people who could have possibly told him — the spy in the Order, and Sirius Black. He felt it like cement in his chest crushing. Behind him he could smell the iron tang of blood and the thick sweet stench of death.

There was in the air the feeling like atoms shifting. Voldemort’s eyes cast again through the window to Remus’ left. His mouth — what was supposed to pass for a mouth — twisted in a smile. “Ah,” he said, softly. “Here they are.” Around them outside the cracks of many people Apparating simultaneously.

“Fenrir Greyback has already gone with much of his pack to the Ministry basement cells to await what I am sure will be a very short trial and a long sentence in Azkaban,” he said. “You of course will be joining them shortly — ” He put his hand on Remus’ shoulder; his skin was frozen, and there was nothing beneath it, no heartbeat, no twitch of muscle. “We will see,” he said, “if your loyalties to your master will finally stretch also to me once you have spent a day in the prison.” He stepped back into the shadows. Outside the MLE squad was gathering —

“I think I shall enjoy watching you suffer with the rest of your breed,” said Voldemort, and the crack of his Disapparition was lost in the outpouring of spells in the field.

~

In the three years since Remus last set foot inside the Ministry not much if anything had changed. He could see his reflection in the scrubbed tile floor as the MLE officials jostled him down to the basement cells — pale, thin, exhausted, mouth twisted with pain from the silver handcuffs in which they’d bound his wrists. The ragged robes Voldemort had forced him to wear were slipping from his shoulders such than he resembled a starving orphan from a Dickens novel. When he tried to think of James and Lily his mind flinched from it. His thoughts were static.

The basement cells were accessible with keycards and a complex bit of magic Remus could not follow. The heat and stillness of the air was exacerbated by the guttering torches mounted in iron on the walls. The walls and floor smelled of cleaning fluid, sterile, like a Muggle hospital. He had taken maybe three steps in when he smelled something else beneath — the raw animal musk scent of werewolves. Even in the dull orangeish lighting it was undifficult to see Greyback’s form hunched in the cell directly opposite the door. Beside it was an empty cell. And all around in the other cells were the prostrate forms of the rest of the pack, piled in sometimes three or four together because there were not enough cells to hold them all. Remus supposed Greyback was alone because he was the pack leader.

The MLE official who was holding Remus by the arm thrust him forward bodily so that he stumbled. “Get in there,” he said, pushing Remus towards the empty cell.

The silver handcuffs had rubbed Remus’ skin raw and he could feel blisters beginning to form up beneath the metal. “When,” he began — he discovered his mouth still wasn’t working right despite the _Imperius_ curse having been lifted — “when is the trial?”

The MLE official started laughing. In the oppressive silence of underground it was an ugly echoing sound. “Trial?”

“Yes, for — for all of us.”

More laughter. “D’you hear that,” the MLE official called over his shoulder, “he thinks, this wolf-thing thinks he’ll get a trial.” They were all laughing. In his cell even Greyback was laughing — harsh, grating sound closer to a dog choking on gristle. The MLE official shoved Remus again, forced him through the cell door, and slammed it shut behind him. “Dementors’ll be here soon,” he said. “All of you better start preparing for a long fuckin’ night. It’s Azkaban in the morning.” Still laughing he turned and walked out; Remus heard the lock click again with magic behind him.

He sank to the floor. He wanted to press the heels of his hands to his eyes to stop himself from crying but he could not — the handcuffs dug into his skin. He pressed his head against the crumbling brick wall behind him; beneath the harsh smell of cleaner was the stench of death, and of rot. He wondered how many had died in here of fear or from suicide executed in carefully constructed ways prior to trial or to their removal to Azkaban. When the Dementors came he understood it would be something of a relief. They would sweep everything from his mind except the worst things and even that eventually he would forget because he would no longer have a point of comparison with which to say, these things are terrible because —  They would be the only memories and then there would not be any. He would shift into the other body until he died of starvation. He very nearly longed for it. For a long time he listened to a horrible sound — then he shut his mouth, and it stopped.

~

At the flat in Hampstead, October 1979: For a while they sat together with Remus’ hand on Sirius’ wrist, not speaking, as the sunlight moved slowly up the wall. Eventually Sirius had the house-elf make tea — with milk for himself, and with lemon for Remus, because it soothed his throat after the long night. It brought them the fine old Black china which Sirius had said once was a relic of his family’s dealings in Egypt, which Remus understood to mean it likely had Dark origins, and would have been not out of place in Knockturn Alley. Surprisingly it had never burned his hands or poisoned him.

“I don’t think I would’ve ever spoken to you again,” Remus said, “if Dumbledore hadn’t asked me to join the pack, and I hadn’t run into you in Camden that day.”

Sirius glanced at him, eyebrows lifted a little over the edge of the cup. “So you’ve forgiven me?”

“Don’t get ahead of me, that isn’t what I’m saying — ” though in a way it was — “I don’t trust you at all — ”

Sirius laughed into his tea. “Thank god for that — ”

“ — but I…” How to say: I wouldn’t have anyone to speak to about anything other than work. I wouldn’t really have anyone to speak about anything at all, because of everyone I know we mistrust each other the least… “It’s good to get out of the house,” he said finally. Sirius laughed again — it was never not the barest thrill of real accomplishment to put that expression of surprise on his face. How odd, to think that in a way he’d ended up owing Sirius for something, too.

“See,” Sirius said, “you get information _and_ sex. Deciding to fuck around with me wasn’t so bad, after all, was it, Lupin.”

Remus wanted to feel something — annoyance, aggravation, any one of the old emotions. But he felt only tired. It was a tiredness that expanded to himself and Sirius. He did not pity Sirius for his life — Sirius had chosen it, after all. But he wondered what sort of person Sirius might have been, who he himself might have been, if either of them had ever once felt they had the choice to deny their heritage.

“Stop trying to get me to flatter you, it’s unattractive,” he said, and tasted the bitterness of tea when Sirius kissed him.

~

This deep underground he was unaware of the passage of time. Eventually — it could have been hours or perhaps only minutes — he became aware of the familiar voice speaking:

“ — this is only the beginning.” Greyback. It sounded as though he were leaning against the wall to Remus’ right. “After we have served substantial time in the prison he will find a way to release us — ”

“You can’t actually believe that,” Remus said. In fact he did not realize he’d spoken out loud until he heard the body shifting beside him and then:

“His reign has not even fully developed into — ”

“He spoke to me.” The skin beneath the handcuffs had gone numb so bright was the pain. Blood was beginning to run in slow rivulets down his forearms. It caught in the soft pale hairs on his wrists. “At the cottage in Derbyshire.”

“He would not have so much as deigned to look your way — ”

“He was waiting for me,” Remus said. He was talking mostly to keep his mind off Events but even as he said it he knew it was true. Sirius — and the traitor in the Order — would have told him: _there will be one left after you’ve shipped the rest of the pack off to Azkaban when they’ve outlived their usefulness…_ “He was still in the cottage and he told me he’s going to use werewolves and other creatures to kill for him. That’s it, that’s all he wants. And then he’ll let us be thrown into Azkaban when it’s no longer convenient for him to — ”

“He has paved the way for us in a larger world,” Greyback snarled. “You who are only a child — you have placed your faith in those who would see you tamed, beaten down, made like them — ”

“If he thinks Muggleborns and half-bloods are lesser then surely he thinks the same of us.”

“Do not use their words near me; I tire of it. You have made camp with us every month on the night we are born again and you cannot deny for yourself the pleasure it caused you — ”

Every morning waking naked in whatever field/woods/factory. Tasting the blood in his mouth, wondering if he’d killed another human. Wondering if the wolf would remember the way it felt to kill other than senseless animals. If the wolf had enjoyed the night in the Room of Requirement.

“You who have already killed in service for one of them — ”

Remus dug his nails into his bare knees. The silver scraped his thighs and raised welts on the tender skin. “That’s not — that was a mistake.”

“That isn’t what your friend tells me.”

He knew Greyback meant Sirius yet still something in the tone in which he said it rang a chill up Remus’ spine like frozen bathwater. “What — ”

“Oh yes, your friend, he spilled all your secrets to myself and the Dark Lord months ago. He was very eager to tell us all about you, how very reclusive you became towards the end of your time at Hogwarts — all about the kind of company you were keeping.”

_I wonder what it’s like to lie down with a beast._ Remus bit down on his lower lip. In the cells to his left he could hear the others crying.

“Yes, you enjoyed the murder of Severus Snape very much, Remus,” Greyback said. “However long you wish to deny it won’t change that. Only — take care in future what beasts you take as friends. The two I killed yesterday may have been spared had you not placed your faith in lesser creatures.”

Something nudged at the back of Remus’ mind. He tried to flinch from it but could not — the truth was invariable.

“None of your Order knew,” Greyback was saying, “and none of the Dark Lord’s knew — no, not even among his most faithful were privy to the rat from within who provided us with such useful information.”

At first he did not understand because he couldn’t. Within his mind certain ragged things were touching, and it played on a loop, like a needle caught in the groove: _the rat, the rat, the rat._ He thought perhaps he said something but it was inaudible through the static building in his mind. Like serrated edges running together he heard Greyback’s laughter. The rat. Peter. Peter at the last Order meeting questioning Remus about which house he intended to take James and Lily to, and his furtiveness, his quietness, and how Remus had overlooked him — as had everyone — because he’d been so far in the background… Peter was the spy in the Order. Peter had taken James and Lily to the cottage. Peter had told Greyback to come a month early. Peter had betrayed them all.

_None of the Dark Lord’s knew — no, not even his most faithful._

From his throat issued a dry, heaving sob. When the Dementors came he was sure they would take the knowledge of Sirius’ ignorance first.

~

He continued to expect the Dementors and they continued to not appear. Remus supposed they had to travel from the North Sea via some means other than Apparition; they did not have corporeal forms and so could not twist themselves into space. Else the Ministry was simply withholding them for the sake of pure mental torture. Greyback had stopped speaking — Remus could hear him humming to himself, occasionally — and the others of the pack were either asleep or whining to themselves when the door opened and in came Albus Dumbledore. He was accompanied by three or four MLE squad members all of whom held their wands before them as though the cell doors were made of other than silver. Remus stood, in spite of the ache in his thighs, and watched his blood drip from his wrists onto the stained floor.

Dumbledore walked to him. In the flickering light his expression was unlike Remus had ever seen it — very old, very tired, and very angry. “Explain to me why,” he said.

“Albus, I didn’t — ”

“You have been keeping company with known Death Eater Sirius Black since 1979 and Fenrir Greyback since 1978 and you expect me to believe your innocence?”

“I — ”

“It was a clever ruse, Remus. I admit that. But James and Lily Potter are dead now, along with the last hope we had for a savior.” The firelight was catching on his half-moon spectacles, hiding his eyes. “I should have let you go to Azkaban after your first offense. But I am a man of many faults — always willing to give people second chances.”

Remus wrapped the robe tighter around his shoulders. The handcuffs bit into his skin. “It wasn’t me,” he said, “there was — there’s a spy within the Order. It’s Peter Pettigrew, Albus; he betrayed James and Lily — ”

“Liar,” said Dumbledore, almost kindly. “I understand now — you will blame everyone but yourself for your nature. I should have seen it years ago.” He turned away from the cell and started again for the door.

“Albus — ” Remus could hear his voice shaking. “I didn’t do it.”

The old man stopped. When he looked over his shoulder, he was smiling. He almost resembled the man who nearly nine years previous had come to the Lupins’ house in Somerset and said, _If you would like, Remus, I have made it possible for you to attend Hogwarts._

“My dear boy,” he said, “whoever would believe you?”


	8. Chapter 8

**_January 1977 – September 1978_ **

They managed to postpone Remus’ trial only because he was underage, and — for some reason — because it was the holidays, and because Dumbledore had apparently said something about it being entirely Sirius’ fault. As such Remus went with his parents for the remainder of December — one weeks’ time, not including the night following that of the Yule Ball — and the first two days of January to their cottage in Derbyshire, a leftover remnant of some distant relations, well out of the public eye and therefore safe for Remus to stay hidden. The utilities and such were paid for by some or another government stipend which Remus privately suspected his father had coerced some Muggle official into agreeing to — it was not the sort of thing he would ever ask about. The first night there they ate takeout curry Remus’ mother picked up in town. It was very cold; the frost on the flagstones nearly burned the bare soles of Remus’ feet, but his ankles were still aching and he could not put on shoes. Remus did not say much of anything beyond the obvious:

“I’m sorry,” whispered at his mostly untouched food. Hope and Lyall exchanged a look Remus knew he wasn’t supposed to have seen; then she reached across the table and took his forearm. Her hand was very cold and tender and he started crying.

“Sweetheart,” Hope said. It was all she could say. He wanted to ask if they believed his innocence, but he was sure he knew the answer, and he was equally as sure that he did not want to know if the answer was no. Eventually he went to bed and lay awake most of the night watching at the waning moon through the window, feeling his healed bones where they pressed against the bruised skin.

The owls came, one by one, over a period of days: all from Dumbledore, all requiring no response. _I have ensured Sirius will speak in the trial,_ said one, which made Remus laugh, harsh biting sound, because Sirius speaking in the trial was of course tantamount to Remus’ going to Azkaban. _There are courses you can take by mail order to complete your schooling,_ said another, accompanied by a list of said courses which Remus burned in the fireplace while his parents made tea in the kitchen talking underneath a Silencing charm.

Nothing from his friends. Nothing even from Lily. Remus told himself not to be surprised. He missed being able to do simple magic with his wand yet he realized he deserved no less. Lyall who was Apparating daily to and from his job at the Ministry eventually brought home the trial date. Hope listened with Remus to Muggle radio which was playing a lot of Pink Floyd. They received the _Daily Prophet_ and on the eighth day Snape’s obituary appeared, alongside a clipping about the attack. The picture they’d chosen for Snape was about as flattering as could be reasonably expected: he was blinking very slowly at the camera, and just before the picture looped a strand of his hair would fall forward into his face. Beside it was the picture of Remus — taken prior to September, because the scar over his nose was only a single pale nearly invisible line. He was chewing his lower lip and cutting his eyes furtively to the side. Likely they’d chosen this one so as to make him appear guilty.

 _Remus Lupin,_ the article read, _a former sixth year at Hogwarts, was recently revealed to be of a lycanthropic nature following the brutal slaying of fellow student Severus Snape —_

He slammed a plate of burnt toast upon the newspaper and walked outside into the cold watching the clouds move darkly across the low horizon. How will you go forward from here, said Sirius’ voice again inside his mind. He closed his eyes against the wind. He could smell snow gathering in the west.

~

The trial took place in the Ministry basement. There was no other sound as Remus stepped off the elevators with his parents accompanying except the muffled muted voices from the Department of Mysteries, echoing dreamlike against the walls. The floors had recently been waxed or buffed and Remus could see his reflection in the tile — wan, pale, scared. He’d lost weight in Derbyshire. There was a reddish mark on his lower lip where he’d been biting at it since the night previous. An MLE officer had taken them down so as to prevent journalists from hounding Remus but he knew they were following — already upstairs they’d been pressed in close despite the invisibility charm placed at the back entrance for Remus’ protection. As such the guard led them quickly into the courtroom where already the Wizengamot was gathered in full. Several of them cast looks at Remus as he passed, fearful or disgusted or else pitying, which in some way was worse. To their right was the section for witnesses — Dumbledore sat towards the front, and then behind him, several rows back:

Sirius.

Of course Remus had not seen him since the day of the ball. The lighting in the courtroom rendered his features particularly angular and sharp. He’d pulled all his hair neatly back but several strands were falling into his face. His left leg was jittering almost absently. Remus watched him watching him, the silvery fox eyes. His mouth curled into something resembling a smile; it was very cold and very mocking. How will you go forward from here. Remus looked away. He could almost hear the laughter. His hand went instinctively to touch his wand before he remembered he did not have it.

When he reached the center of the room he was led away from his parents who themselves went to sit in the section for spectators along with the journalists and Ministry officials. Snape’s parents, his hawk-nosed father and dead-eyed mother, and another couple, a severe woman with graying hair and her husband, handsome and cruel-mouthed. After a moment Remus realized they were the Blacks. Mrs. Black narrowed her eyes when she saw Remus. He wondered what Sirius had told her.

They seated him in the defendant’s chair. Because Dumbledore had spoken in his favor he had not been manacled in silver but the box in which the chair had been sectioned off was lined with it such that he had to keep very still in order to avoid touching the sides. There was a dim rushing in his ears like of blood or static. It felt as though he blinked and suddenly they were calling his name.

“Remus Lupin,” said a witch with very frosted hair. Remus remembered that due to his age she could not administer Veritaserum. “On the twenty-seventh of December, 1976, did you kill Severus Snape in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?”

“Yes,” said Remus. From her seat Mrs. Snape made a low pained sound.

“At the time, were you under any sort of spell — the _Imperius_ curse, perhaps?”

“I’m a werewolf, so,” said Remus. Without meaning to he glanced at Sirius who looked momentarily as though he wanted to laugh. The witch’s brow furrowed.

“So you had transformed that night,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Were you under the habit of transforming in that room?”

“I’d just started in November.”

“And when you did so in December did you deliberately invite Severus to come with you?”

Remus felt his thumbnail break the skin. “No.”

“Where were you transforming prior to November?”

So help him he could not look at Dumbledore. “In the woods — in the Forbidden Forest.”

“What made you change your mind, Mr. Lupin?”

“Sirius suggested the Room of Requirement,” Remus said. He could not admit even to the court that he’d gone with it so willingly — without consulting his friends, against every part of him screaming to think about it first. Somewhere inside he knew the wolf was laughing —

“Sirius Black?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Black knew you were a werewolf?”

Remus bit his lip, the sore place of it where he’d been worrying it all day. “Yes.”

The witch looked satisfied, which of course felt not a little portentous. “What is your relationship to Mr. Black?”

Cold press of lips. Plate of toast. Shared cigarette the morning of the full moon. “We aren’t friends or anything,” Remus said. “We share some classes; he’s in Slytherin and I’m — I was in Gryffindor.” In his seat Sirius shifted. He looked as though he were watching a mildly interesting drama on Muggle television.

“I see,” said the witch. “And did you make it a habit of telling all your classmates, friends or not, about your condition?”

“Sirius figured it out on his own; I didn’t tell him.”

“Yet when Mr. Black figured out you shift into an extremely dangerous creature at the full moon every month, he did not immediately go running to tell any of your professors.”

“No, but — ”

“Instead, he made a suggestion to you as to where you should start transforming. This, despite not being close friends. And you took his suggestion — again, despite not being close, Mr. Lupin, am I correct?”

“That isn’t — ”

“What was your relationship to the deceased, Mr. Lupin?”

The blood was again roaring in Remus’ ears. “Snape and I weren’t friends, either.”

“So I suppose he was also unaware of your condition? Since you have already established that you don’t go about telling your classmates you’re a werewolf.”

 _Considering your condition I suppose you don’t have much room to complain about who lowers their standards enough to touch you._ “He, um.” Remus dug his nail into the bed of his index finger, feeling the sharp edges of dead skin. “He was — ” He cleared his throat. The air was oppressive. He could feel the heat of the silver on all sides burning. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not _sure?”_

“He might’ve known, I don’t know.” Remus pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. “Like I’ve said we weren’t friends and — ”

“So Severus Snape _might have known_ that you turn monthly into a deadly creature. Sirius Black knew you turn into the same creature. You claim you were friends with neither of these boys, yet Mr. Black was able to talk you into transforming in a room which adapts itself to the user’s needs? On a night when the entire school would just happen to be busy seven floors below?”

“None of this was _planned,_ ” Remus spit out, “it wasn’t like Sirius and I stood there saying, ‘let’s see how we can best kill Snape — ’”

“I have testimony from Mr. Black himself that he was at the Yule Ball for the entirety of the night,” said the witch.

“The witness’ memories of this night have been placed into a Pensieve and found to be true,” said a member of the Wizengamot, sounding nearly bored. One edge of Sirius’ mouth pulled up; he leaned back, kicking his leg up over the seat in front of him. He was wearing the dragonhide boots again. Remus wanted to rip them off his feet and shove them down his throat.

“So tell me, Mr. Lupin,” said the witch, “did you or did you not take Mr. Black’s idea to use the Room of Requirement and twist it into an excuse to lure your fellow student upstairs and slaughter him?”

“I _didn’t bring Snape —_ ”

“Are you aware of what goes on during your transformations, Mr. Lupin?”

“No,” whispered Remus. The witch had to ask him to repeat it, and then she said:

“So you lose your mind, so to speak, once a month.”

“Yes.”

“Knowing you black out for — what is it, seven, eight hours, it would be very easy indeed for you to get away with just about anything while in your wolf form.”

“I — ”

“I mean, if you don’t remember what you did, how on earth could you be held culpable for it. Is that correct?”

“No, I — ”

“Let’s all feel sorry for the young werewolf seated before us today, ladies and gentlemen! He simply can’t remember what he does while in another, dangerous, volatile, carnivorous form! He’s out of his own control; how could he be responsible for the death of his fellow student?” Her mouth was white at the corners with the fury of her argument. “Is that it, Mr. Lupin?”

“I didn’t lead — ”

“Sirius Black knew of your condition. He suggested to you to use the Room of Requirement. You thought _maybe,_ just _maybe_ Severus Snape knew too. So you wanted to get rid of him. Is that it?”

“No!” Remus was nearly shouting; he was shaking violently all over. One of his elbows kept hitting the edge of the seat where the silver was at its strongest; he could feel it like shocks running through every nerve ending.

“By your own admission, you and Severus Snape weren’t even friends,” the witch said. “By your own admission you lose your mind once a month. It would be very easy indeed to take advantage of both of those circumstances in order that you might lure Mr. Snape to his own death, would it not?”

“That isn’t what happened — ”

“If you lost your mind, Mr. Lupin, how could you know?”

Remus felt his mouth drop open just slightly. Sirius was laughing, silently, behind his hand.

“No further questions,” the witch said, smiling.

~

Sirius was called down shortly after; because he was of age, they administered Veritaserum, and seated him in a chair a few feet away from Remus. Up close Remus could see where the damp dark tendrils of his hair fell against the back of his neck. His posture was loose with the potion. Remus noticed he’d bitten his nails all the way down to their quicks again.

“Lupin,” he said. Veritaserum gave his voice a strange atonal quality.

I’m going to kill you, Remus wanted to, didn’t, say. Clenching his jaw he stared straight ahead at the witch who was shuffling papers. He could sense even without looking the way Sirius’ mouth had twisted in his cold amusement. At last with an easy smile the witch looked up and said to Sirius:

“Did you suggest to Remus Lupin that he transform in the Room of Requirement?”

“Yes.”

“So you were aware he was a werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“Did he share this information with you himself?”

“Yes.”

It was not a lie, entirely, the way the witch had phrased it — Remus had, albeit somewhat indirectly, told Sirius his assumption was correct. He could sense Sirius’ triumph and his hands were very tight around the armrests of the chair in which he sat.

“Why did you tell Mr. Lupin to transform in the Room of Requirement?”

“I was being helpful.” Sirius’ teeth flashed. “In the Forest I know — it was very hard to transform alone and not kill anyone.”

Snape’s mother flinched. Remus closed his eyes.

“And on the evening of December 27, 1976, where were you while Mr. Lupin was undergoing his monthly transformation?”

“I was at the Yule Ball.”

“You were not in the vicinity of the Room of Requirement?”

“No.”

“You did not see whether or not Mr. Lupin let Severus Snape into the room prior to his transformation?”

“No.”

“At any time during the evening, was Severus Snape at the Yule Ball with you?”

“Not that I was aware of.”

“No further questions — ”

“Just a moment,” Dumbledore said, pleasantly. It was a tone that Remus in the years following would come to dread/resent hearing but now in the Ministry basement he was only grateful that the old man was at last standing and walking down several rows in the atrium to stand nearly beside the witch. “If I may — I would now like the opportunity to act as witness for the defense.” With a small incline of his head he indicated Remus. Several of the less staunch-looking members of the Wizengamot let out small laughs. The witch who had been doing the questioning looked for a moment as though she would deny him — but then she sighed, and stepped back, and allowed Dumbledore to move forward.

“Mr. Black,” he said, “when you discovered that Mr. Lupin was in fact of a lycanthropic nature, why didn’t you immediately inform a professor?”

Sirius blinked. “I assumed everyone — all the teaching staff already knew.”

“Are you and Mr. Lupin friends?”

Remus could see his throat working against the question. But the potion demanded absolute truth and at last finally he had to say, “No.”

“The two of you are not in the habit of sharing close personal information?”

“No.”

“Then why would you have assumed anything of the sort?”

“It — ” Sirius’ jaw worked. “Really the idea of telling the professors never crossed my mind after I realized what was going on.”

“Then what was your intention in finding out the truth of Mr. Lupin’s species?”

“I thought, I had this idea I could use it against him. As blackmail somehow.”

Remus glanced quickly towards the Wizengamot but their faces betrayed nothing. Neither did Sirius’ parents’ expressions, although Mrs. Black’s mouth had tightened a little at the corners. He smoothed his hands out against his trousers — silver burning against his arm. He felt sick. He remembered with sudden lightning clarity the way Sirius had sneered as he’d said: _I haven’t told anyone — yet._

“What was your relationship to the deceased, Mr. Black?” Dumbledore asked.

“He was just my classmate,” Sirius muttered. His cheeks had flushed with high color; he was clearly furious. “I didn’t like him. None of my friends liked him.” He glanced up to where Snape’s parents sat. “Worthless greasy little fuck — ”

“Mr. Black,” the witch cautioned.

“Did you have malicious intent towards Severus Snape at any point between when you discovered that Remus Lupin is a werewolf and the night of the Yule Ball?”

“Yes.”

“Your intent was to kill Severus Snape?”

“Yes.”

Silence in the courtroom but for the rapid breathing of Snape’s mother. Mr. and Mrs. Black’s expressions were inscrutable.

“Did you set it up so that Mr. Lupin would be alone in the Room of Requirement with Severus at the time of his transformation?”

Remus could see where Sirius’ hands were shaking in his lap — either from rage or else from nerves. “Yes.”

“Did you deliberately talk Mr. Lupin into using that room for his transformations so that you could set this up?”

“Yes.”

“Were you aware that Mr. Lupin loses complete control of his mind during the night of the full moon and therefore would be unaware of any other person in the room with him?”

“Yes.” Tightly: “It’s basic fucking knowledge, it’s in any book in the library — ”

“Mr. Black,” the witch repeated, warningly.

“How did you get Severus Snape into the Room of Requirement with a fully transformed werewolf?”

“I waited until the moon rose. I got Snape out of our dorm, I told him he could come prove to the whole school what kind of dangerous freak we were all rooming with. I’d already put a spell on the room so it would do what I said, and not what Lupin needed. I told Snape to just go to the room; he knew where it was.”

“And you stayed at the Yule Ball, free of culpability.”

“Yes.”

“Did Mr. Lupin have any knowledge of your plan?”

“No.”

There was a long pause. Dumbledore sighed. He looked for a moment almost tired.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we see before us a pair of teenagers. One is a werewolf who has freely admitted to the court that he loses control of his mind once a month. A terrifying experience, I’m sure, and one none of us would wish to share. We have also heard Mr. Black state quite plainly that he did not share with Mr. Lupin his intentions to harm Severus Snape.”

The witch who had questioned Remus said, “He’s known for years he is a werewolf, and the effects it has on his state of mind.”

“Yes, but again, I must remind you that Mr. Black did not tell Mr. Lupin that he was setting murder into motion. Nor should Mr. Lupin be held responsible for something which happened outside his current frame of reference. He had no knowledge of what Sirius Black was doing; he knew only that he needed a place in which to transform. In the nearly six years he was a student at Hogwarts, Mr. Lupin never once harmed another student, nor did he express the desire to do so. Had he shown tendencies towards violence, I would have immediately removed him from the premises. As it stands until the murder of Severus Snape he was a calm, placid student who went out of his way to avoid hurting others.”

“Yes,” said a Ministry official, “but he still committed murder.”

“He did so under unusual circumstances which were set up by another person who sits here before you having admitted as much under Veritaserum.”

“Albus, he’s a danger — he should be in Azkaban — ”

Cold terror like a knife plunged through ice in Remus’ heart. For the first time since the trial began he looked quickly at his mother who had her handkerchief pressed tightly to her mouth.

“He is sixteen years old,” Dumbledore said. “He will not be of age for another two months. He did not deliberately kill another student.” He looked behind him at the Wizengamot who were murmuring among themselves so rapidly as to sound like another language. “Remus Lupin has been expelled from Hogwarts, and his wand removed from his person. He has told all of you that he did not enter that room on the night of December 27 with the intent to kill.” A pause. “He only awaits your verdict.”

They were conversing closely with heads lowered. Remus could feel Sirius’ eyes on him, hot, angry, but he refused to look over. He could feel the golden threads of his magic all pulling to the surface as they’d done in September, during the fight, in detention. How will you go forward from here.

At length the witch turned to face Remus and Sirius. “All those in favor of clearing the accused of all charges,” she said. A good many hands went up, far more than Remus had expected. In their seats he saw the Blacks and the Snapes and the way their faces changed.

“Those against,” said the witch, but it was unnecessary. Only about ten members raised their hands. The witch counted, and then she sighed. Remus watched her mouth move around the words _cleared of all charges,_ but he could hardly hear her for the buzzing in his ears. He watched as though through a film as Sirius was led away to be administered the antidote for Veritaserum. From where he stood Dumbledore smiled.

~

In March Remus turned seventeen; shortly after he got a job at a Muggle record store in Derbyshire near enough to the family cottage he could walk to it daily — he’d been staying there since the trial rather than go home and endanger his parents at the house in Somerset and they had after some mild and mostly superficial arguing agreed to it. Anyway there was a Floo directly connected between the houses of which Remus’ mother made liberal use — it was one of the first things, she said, that had endeared her to the wizarding world. Also the basement in Somerset was altogether unpleasant to transform in but Remus was unsure he would be allowed at the supervised cells in St. Mungo’s even with Dumbledore’s pardon and his wand returned to him. The fields around the cottage in Derbyshire on the other hand ran for several miles without disruption and the wolf seemed to know them by some instinct. The morning after he first transformed in mid-January he’d woken half-burrowed in a snowbank like wolves in the Arctic north with the cottage several hundred yards to his left and the sun coming up in pale gradient over the horizon. Even freezing and sore with his bare skin in the snow there had been a measure of calm in his mind he’d not felt since the last time he’d transformed with Lily and the others.

The job was easy, or anyway easy enough. The owner spent most of his time stoned listening to Grateful Dead records and mumbling about the differences between varied folk groups. Remus sorted the albums alphabetically and occasionally directed the (equally stoned) patrons to whatever they were looking for which usually was the same Led Zeppelin or Stones album over and over on infinite loop. Once a month he had to ask off on the day following the full moon due to the soreness of his bones and bruised skin but the owner did not seem to care much about that or anything else. In the evenings after work sometimes he would wander into the town and buy a curry or noodles and walk back to the cottage. Other times he just went straight home and found his mother cooking having brought food through the Floo. She seemed softly concerned for his basic wellbeing but outside of pushing his hair back off his forehead and remarking on his thinness did not say anything much. Remus’ father Apparated over after work on occasions to teach him how to do the same, since he’d missed the classes. It was a violent process rather like forcing one’s bones to break but after the initial lessons Remus found it relatively no worse than the sensation of becoming the wolf in the moments before his consciousness was snatched away. And as he’d dealt with that since the tender and bloody age of five he felt also he could deal with Apparition.

It grew gradually less like shredding his own skin with a cheese grater to remember that he had killed Snape. For a while he’d considered purchasing a Pensieve with the little money he made at his job and placing the memory inside it — Snape’s body torn apart, the blood on the floor like a Rorschach print, and the horror, and afterwards the cold judgment, but he found he could not dredge up the will to do so, and anyway it was either a Pensieve or his dinner. Less easy to reconcile to himself were the memories of Sirius, his hair spilling like ink over his wrist during classes; his hands, the nails longish and sometimes stained with nicotine; the way he’d touched Remus’ jaw when they’d kissed. Beyond the physical the fact that he’d left the plate of toast — ceaselessly Remus’ brain trailed back to that moment, just that one over and over. He’d planned Snape’s murder, he’d set Remus up, and yet. Sirius had no redeemable qualities whatsoever and Remus was sure he’d kill him if they ever saw each other again yet Remus knew he’d been the one to accept Sirius’ suggestion. And it begged the question of if Sirius was a monster what did that make Remus.

He transformed monthly and listened to a lot of Bowie — except of course for _Ziggy Stardust —_ and smoked occasionally with his head stuck out the window because his mother could always tell. After a year or so of his living in Derbyshire she stopped coming around as often and at first he thought perhaps she was busy at her own job or else just wanting to give Remus space. Gradually he realized there were things going on which his father wasn’t telling him; they wouldn’t treat her at St. Mungo’s because she was a Muggle, and because the cancer at the time of its discovery was already stage three. All Remus could do in the end was take a week off work and lock up the cottage and go home and hold her hand. It was the middle of July ’78 and so hot the very windows seemed like to radiate heat. Lyall was crying despite his having seen Hope deteriorating for months. For his own part Remus could not feel much of anything. His mother who after the initial bite in ’65 had taken him herself to get on the national werewolf registry, holding his hand tightly in hers, waiting in the freezing antechamber of St. Mungo’s for the witch at the desk to call them up. Afterwards she’d taken Remus for ice cream. On the ride home they’d listened to Patsy Cline. And every month after for years she’d had the sofa ready for him with blankets and pillows and healing creams and there would be soft jazz playing on the stereo.

After the funeral the cottage in Derbyshire passed nominally to Remus. Lyall seemed content to stay in Somerset and Remus could hardly argue. He went back to work only to discover that he immediately had to take the following day off yet again in order to transform. The owner grunted about teenage work ethics. There was sweat dampening his underarms and along his upper lip a thin ratty mustache had begun to grow. He’d switched the Grateful Dead for, bizarrely, Creedence Clearwater Revival. _I see a bad moon rising._ There was an itch in Remus’ throat. He remembered discussing Cat Stevens with Sirius in Hogsmeade.

Two days prior to the start of term at Hogwarts — the thought passing through his mind with strange shivery nostalgia, like remembering something already years gone — he was fired. The whole thing was rather unsurprising as the owner had since July been eyeing him with increasing suspicion. In August he’d refused to allow Remus to take off and as such he’d spent the day following the full moon hunched over in the stacks trying desperately not to vomit or pass out. He gave Remus his severance and mumbled something about luck which Remus was sure he did not mean. Then he sent Remus out into the pale sunshine.

He went into the town. The moon was a week or so from full and his skin felt stretched tight over his whole self as though looking at him would resemble a cartography of bone and muscle. He walked into his usual grocery to buy cans of soup and a fresh dozen eggs and then he walked out and Dumbledore was standing in the middle of the street waiting for him. He looked much the same as he’d done when Remus had last seen him a year and a half ago; he wore chartreuse robes and passersby were staring at him, and his half-moon spectacles were perched just at the center of his long crooked nose, and he was smiling — there was an edge to it Remus did not like. He walked forward and clasped Remus on the arm.

“Remus,” he said. “It has been far, far too long.”

Remus who of course had burned all of Dumbledore’s letters in the interim rather than answering them — the owls coming less and less frequently until they stopped altogether — had no real idea as to how the old man had even found his location. But he knew better than to ask. Instead with as much politeness as he could muster he invited Dumbledore back to his cottage for tea. They walked together the familiar path from the town to the house where Remus put away his groceries and set some tea on the stove the Muggle way to try and stop his hands from shaking. He watched Dumbledore look around the house with his shrewd eyes. His eyes lit on the memorial photograph of Remus’ mother on the mantelpiece — her reddish hair blowing gently about her face, the dimple in her right cheek showing just barely before the picture looped.

“I heard,” he said. “A tragic loss for you and your father.”

Remus felt his mouth tighten. “How,” he began, turning back to the stove to watch the tea, and then remembered that was not the question he wanted to ask. “Why are you here?” he asked instead; he found it came out with more force than he thought he could’ve mustered while still in school. Certainly it was a surprise to him that no longer being a student he had stopped feeling that awe wrapped in fear around Dumbledore — or rather the fear remained, but it was of a different nature. Vaguely Remus remembered the morning after his fight with Sirius, September ’76 — _I assume that the business from last night is finished._ It had been the first time he’d felt threatened rather than consoled by the old man. And then later, after the trial — Dumbledore clasping him on the shoulder. Shaking hands with his parents. That smile still twinkling in his eyes as he’d said: _That certainly went well._ As though he’d been expecting otherwise.

“To check on you,” Dumbledore said. He was eyeing the assorted records Remus had accumulated in his year working at the record shop: _Lust for Life. Station to Station. More Songs About Buildings and Food,_ some of the strangest and most unsettling music Remus had ever heard. “And I have — well, it’s rather an odd request. I believe we should sit down before I make it.”

So help him Remus could summon neither the will nor the fortitude to ask Dumbledore to leave. He poured the tea with his hands still trembling and his whole body aware as ever of the moon. He walked to the sofa and handed Dumbledore a cup and then sat himself feeling exhausted. It was just now really hitting him that he’d lost his job. In total after his last paycheck he had maybe two hundred pounds, and he was never sure anymore how much of it to save in Muggle money and how much to convert at Gringotts. He found himself yearning for the week following, when the moon would tear away his consciousness, if only for one night.

They sipped their tea for a while in silence and then Dumbledore put his on its saucer and set it on the table beside the sofa and turned to Remus with his hands clasped over his knees. “First of all,” he said, “how have you been? It’s been — quite some time, hasn’t it, since we last spoke.”

Sensing this was only a perfunctory question Remus just shifted his shoulders: “I’m all right.” He was not sleeping much or at all; he’d dreamed for a while after the Incident of Snape’s body, and though the dreams had waned throughout 1977 they’d returned with a vengeance following his mother’s illness. His transformations left him bloody and bruised from unknown sources and those in the town who were perhaps more astute to wildlife had begun recently to remark on the lowered population of birds and squirrels. He thought sometimes for no reason of Greyback, and the night in Somerset, the snarling, almost human echo to it; the quick tearing bite, and afterwards how he’d screamed on the kitchen table while his mother attempted to wipe the blood off and his father Floo’d the Ministry.

Dumbledore took the lie with a smile. “The same cannot be said for many of your former classmates,” he said, as though this was in any way a decent segue into conversation. “Hence why I’ve come to your neat little hideaway — ”

Remus felt heat crawling up the sides of his neck. “I’m not hiding — ”

“Pardon me, to your safehouse, then,” Dumbledore said, holding his hands spread out. “Of course initially your expulsion and the reason behind it caused quite a stir within the wizarding community; there were those who wanted the kiss administered to you immediately, without a trial. Of course you’d want somewhere to stay where you could guarantee your safety.”

Beneath his sleeves Remus began to pull at the dead skin around his nails.

“Regardless, I have come here to explain to you the current situation. As I’m sure you are aware Voldemort has continued to amass followers and their numbers grow ever in strength throughout the United Kingdom. With war on the horizon I have amassed followers of my own, shall I say — Hogwarts’ finest. Students with whom you would have graduated yourself were circumstances different.” He pulled from his robes a photograph — Remus saw the faces before he’d even really looked at the picture. James. Lily. Peter. Fenwick. Mary Macdonald. The Prewitt brothers, laughing, and beside them Dorcas Meadowes and Marlene McKinnon. Frank Longbottom with his arm around Alice. It was a little like being punched in the gut to see them all gathered post-graduation. Remus bit the inside of his mouth very hard.

“We are called the Order of the Phoenix,” Dumbledore said, “and I must ask that you join us.”

“I don’t — ” Remus cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I’d have, I mean I don’t think I’d be welcome — ”

“On the contrary, you are exactly the voice we need to complete our circle.”

Perhaps he expected Remus to feel honored by this statement but all Remus could think of was how ominous it sounded. He remembered thinking after Snape’s death how he no longer had to pretend to be good or clean or safe, because evidently even after eleven years of living with the other inside him he still could not and never would be able to control it. How much easier it would be just to give in and let the things he knew other witches and wizards were thinking of him become true… He said, “What do you mean,” and Dumbledore said:

“We need — ah, certain insights,” and Remus felt something collapse within him. He looked again at the picture of his old classmates — the Order of the Phoenix. They were all of them eighteen at most; he himself was only eighteen, and yet it felt as though he’d lived already a thousand years.

“Insights,” he repeated.

“Yes. Voldemort is not after all only gathering pureblood witches and wizards; he has also drawn to him Dark creatures among which of course are werewolves — the most prominent of whom I’m sure you can guess.”

Remus was digging his nails so hard into his forearm he felt them break the skin. He already knew the answer but he asked anyway. “And so — you want me to — ”

“There is a place for you in the Order,” Dumbledore said. “You will also have to create for yourself a place among Greyback’s legion.”

This was like the worst — the worst possible thing Dumbledore or anyone could’ve asked of him. Remus felt his heart beating sudden and too quickly against the high part of his ribs and he had to stand because he was afraid he might vomit. “You want me to act as a spy,” he said.

“Yes.” Dumbledore retrieved his tea and took another sip as though they were merely discussing the weather or some other similarly mundane topic. “I understand how dangerous — ”

I don’t think that you do, Remus thought. Reflexively he pressed his hand to his ribs, just below them, where the bite was, the bite that had already created a place for him in Greyback’s legion thirteen years prior. “They won’t believe me,” he said. “In the Order, they won’t believe a word I say.”

“They are your friends,” Dumbledore said — Remus did not miss his usage of the present tense. “Surely they have somewhat of an understanding of the truth of what happened.”

Not a single owl from any of them, James or Lily or Peter, not even at graduation in June. Sometimes when Remus’ mind was at its worst he thought perhaps they’d all only been waiting for an excuse to cut him out of their lives. “They won’t — ”

“Frankly Remus there is no one else,” Dumbledore said. “There are no other werewolves in wizarding Britain who would be willing or able to help us with this and there are none we can trust other than you. In spite of what you think the majority of the Order are willing to believe you. Furthermore as I’m sure you are aware you are perhaps the child Greyback misses most and as such your appearance within his pack will be seen in an extremely prudent light.”

The morning after he’d been bitten, Remus had looked with horror into the bathroom mirror — standing on the stepstool with its little stickers, smiley faces and stars — and seen amid the scratches from the brambles and the torn place upon his upper lip where he’d slammed his face on the ground that his irises had taken on a scrim of yellow at their edges. That his condition could not fully be hidden even when he looked the most human felt like perhaps the worst part of the curse besides the obvious.

“Prudent,” he said.

“It will give you a distinct advantage — he will perhaps be more receptive to your joining the pack despite your having avoided him all these years… and, too, I’m sure he’ll consider the events of December 1976 as a sort of — early rite to initiation…”

Remus flinched. “What if I say no?”

Beneath the beard Dumbledore’s mouth tightened. It was only momentary and it was quickly smoothed into the usual placid expression but it said exactly what Remus had expected which was: you are not allowed to say no. “As I’ve stated already there are no others that can do this for us, Remus.”

“You can’t possibly think — like in all seriousness, you cannot actually believe that any of these people — ” indicating the photograph, in which James and Lily were smiling, waving at the camera — “would listen to a word I say — ”

“It is no longer entirely your decision, Remus,” Dumbledore said. “We are tumbling headfirst into this war. We need to know what the other side is saying, and what they are doing.”

“Can you even guarantee — ” Remus took a breath; he pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I don’t make it out of the initial meetup with Greyback who will be your spy then?”

Again Dumbledore pursed his lips. “Are you refusing?” he asked, which of course did not in any way answer the question.

Remus bit the inside of his mouth. He took another sip of his tea which had in the interim gone cold. He did not answer. Outside he could see storm clouds gathering over the fields to the west.

“You are not in Azkaban,” Dumbledore said, after a while. “The Ministry granted you pardon for your actions. You must learn to move on — to make something of yourself.”

Translation: I got you out of going to prison.

“Your classmates were very fortunate to have you in their lives for the nearly six years you attended Hogwarts. It is I’m sure pointless to remind you that you were our first part-human student since Rubeus Hagrid, who I also have cared for in the interim since his own unfortunate expulsion — ”

Translation: I got you into Hogwarts.

“You were not at fault for what happened in 1976. The members of the Order understand that. I understand that. But you are at — shall I say, a unique point, because you can utilize it. Make Greyback believe you are on his side.”

Remus had clasped his hand very tightly over his mouth. It felt as though he were being shifted across a board into position. “I haven’t seen him,” he began; he had to clear his throat and try again, because his voice was so ragged, an unvoice — “I haven’t seen him since I was five years old.” And then only the muzzle, scarred and bloody, and the teeth, and the wide white moon high overhead —

“He will recognize you,” Dumbledore said. Something in his posture relaxed — clearly he had read Remus’ response as acquiescence which of course it was, there were no other possible options. How will you go forward from here. The little Sirius in his head laughing… From within the depths of his robes the old man withdrew a folder. “Here is information on where you will find him — and on the Order, and our various locations — ”

Setting the photograph on the table Remus took the folder. “How soon,” he asked, and Dumbledore said:

“Within the week.” He smiled. “I understand there is a full moon coming up.”

Dumbledore must have known he would say yes — otherwise he would not have come. He wanted to ask, are you sure this will work, but then of course he already knew the answer.

“I will send you an owl regarding the next Order meeting,” Dumbledore said. “You will not need to attend every one. I will expect you to keep me up to date on the things Greyback tells you — I will see you once a month to ascertain if his information is vital enough to warrant your attending a meeting or not.”

Every month. Remus felt a shudder run the length of his spine.

Dumbledore set his teacup again on the table and stood. “Also I have — a sort of gift for you.”

Later Remus would come to regret this conversation very much, perhaps more than any other. But he had as yet only a nascent understanding that Dumbledore was an expert at getting what he wanted from exactly the right people (his taste of it in the office following his expulsion, and during the trial), and as such all he could do was say:

“A gift?”

“A flat in London,” Dumbledore said, “fully paid for.”

“I have this cottage — ”

“Your Floo, if you Apparate — those things can be traced. It is much safer for you to live within the confines of the city. Also it is quite close to some of our Order locations.”

Translation: I need you somewhere I can keep an eye on you with certainty, and where it will be much more difficult for you to run away.

Again Remus found there was no other answer he could give but yes. Dumbledore was still smiling, and Remus hoped perhaps he was wrong; that perhaps the fear, and the uncertainty, and the mistrust he felt were all unfounded. He remembered the summer he was eleven, his father fretting over good wizard homeschooling programs, and then Dumbledore at their doorstep, letter in hand: _Mr. and Mrs. Lupin, may I come in?_ He’d given Remus a lemon drop. It had been the first time anyone other than his parents had looked at him directly without flinching.

They settled an agreement on when Remus would move into his new flat — three days’ time, which gave him three days more in which to find Greyback and convince him of his sincerity. Dumbledore shook Remus’ hand, and thanked him for the tea and for his decision. He was nearly to the door when Remus said:

“What about Sirius?”

Dumbledore did not turn. “Sirius dropped out of Hogwarts midway through his seventh year, presumably to join the Death Eaters,” he said. “Since then I have heard nothing regarding his whereabouts.”

“He went back to Hogwarts after — ”

“Yes; unfortunately I believe Walburga and Orion had — vast influence over the board of directors with regards to that decision. But he did not graduate with his class.” His fingers touched the doorknob. “I hope this will not affect your decision, Remus — ”

“Why should it?” Remus asked. “We were never friends.”

“Good,” said Dumbledore; Remus could not tell if he was smiling. He crossed the threshold; Remus watched him walk a ways down the path leading from his cottage; then he Disapparated.

~

**_July 1979_ **

The pharmacy on Remus’ street in Camden opened at ten. He had indeed become accustomed in the months he’d lived here to making the walk down the street from his flat to purchase the painkillers necessary to lessen the aftereffects of running with Greyback. Often they were noticeably ineffective in comparison to what he could’ve gotten in the way of pain potions at St. Mungo’s or indeed even in the hospital wing under the supervision of Madam Pomfrey but he could not — did not dare risk St. Mungo’s. They would ask why did he not transform in the supervised cells and then they would remember his master and the rumors of Voldemort keeping Greyback in England under his own protection and they would likely figure things out very quickly. And from there the memory — the strangeness of his case, January ’77. He was nineteen now and it was uncertain if Dumbledore would protect him a second time. The Muggle pharmacist was quiet and smiled gently when she saw Remus. Once when he’d gone there towards the beginning of it all — October or November, perhaps — she’d pushed towards the front of the desk pamphlets regarding domestic abuse. He was going in with copious amounts of bruises at the time.

The morning after the full moon he Apparated back early as had become his custom when he needed new pills. It was an excruciatingly painful process rather like forcing himself to transform in daylight and he landed on the floor of his flat crying. It was just ten and already so hot he had to open his windows and use several air conditioning charms before the sweat would even dry from the back of his neck. He lay for a while half-awake on his carpet, stomach roiling, blood in his teeth — then he got up and showered and walked to the pharmacy where the girl waited with painkillers. She was reading Stephen King and barely looked up except to ring up his purchases. As he waited for her to count out his change he glanced out the window into the blinding white sun and saw Sirius Black walking down the other side of the street.

It was such a shock to see him — over two years, and his face was the same, and his posture, aristocratic and purposeful. He was dressed in Muggle clothes, jeans and a tight-fitting coat despite the heat — Remus had noticed most wizards who frequented Muggle areas wore long sleeves so as to hide their wands; himself he favored them to hide the scars, as well — and his hair was as ever pulled back. He was smoking a cigarette and walking westward.

Remus felt his fingers tighten reflexively and realized he’d gripped his wand. The pharmacist was holding out his medicine and his change: “Are you all right, sir?” He muttered something; he took the medicine — the pain had dissipated from his mind in the rush of shock/anger/hatred — and rushed out the door. Sirius was on the other side of the street; his shadow cast before him as the sun pulled ever upwards in the sky. Remus could see he wore his usual dragonhide boots. He walked quickly wand in hand trembling from the energy and the purpose. At the corner he crossed without waiting for the light. He felt he could snap the cars and the passersby in half with his magic so potent did it feel, simmering subcutaneously, the golden resonating burn of it —

Sirius still had not turned. Remus thought he could corner him in an alley and kill him after the brief and bloody duel he’d felt he was owed since that morning in Dumbledore’s office, his bones mending, Snape’s flayed-open corpse still fresh in his mind, and every moment since: the expulsion, the trial, the hiding… Dumbledore using him without bothering to disguise it and running so long with Greyback he’d begun to dream about the fields or the abandoned industrial factories… losing his friends, whatever tentative grip upon the part of him that appeared human, his ability to get anything like a real job, while Sirius who had orchestrated the whole event to begin with got to return to school after time indeterminate like nothing had happened —

Sirius slowed and Remus did too, already in the middle of lifting his wand, thinking, _at last._ He watched Sirius press his cigarette out under the heel of his boot. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand. His eyes studied for a moment the front of a shop.

Then he went inside.

This was surprising enough Remus momentarily stopped walking. All the shops on this street were Muggle; in fact everything within Camden was Muggle; you had to go into Westminster in order to access certain wizarding shops that were not affiliated with Diagon Alley. Remus had not assumed anyone like Sirius would bother going into a Muggle business for any reason; it seemed suspicious, like perhaps a front for something Other, and so Remus stowed his wand and walked up the half block to the shop where he stood looking in the glass.

It was a sandwich shop. Sirius was selecting from among various meats and cheeses behind the glass counter while the cashier stared with bright shrewd eyes at the tattered coat in the July heat. He purchased a coffee and a plate of hot sausages with white-yellow cheese, two slices of thick hot bread, and a slice of pickle all of which he brought to a table and made into a sandwich, minus the pickle which he ate first. There was a haunted tired look about his face and even somewhat in the way his hands moved restlessly about his plate. His boot tapped against the rung of his chair.

Remus took a deep breath. Then he walked in too.

Sirius glanced up reflexively at the sound of the chime over the door. When he saw Remus his shoulders tensed beneath the coat and Remus saw his hand move like adjusting his wand within his sleeve. There was something bright and wary in his eyes which in this light were the soft gray of storms. Two years. Biting and sharp within the courtroom. On the stereo they were playing Fleetwood Mac: _Tell me why everything turned around…_

Remus walked towards him unsure of what he would say or do. His rage had diffused somewhat yet his magic felt still like lightning surging beneath his skin. Sirius had always drawn it directly to the exact fucking surface. Remus felt wildly out of control. Not for the first time he wished Sirius had somehow accidentally trapped himself inside the Room of Requirement, too.

“Lupin,” said Sirius cautiously, when Remus was close enough. He was bracing his arm against the table in preparation for flight.

There were a thousand, a million things Remus wanted to do — outside it had seemed he was ready to go to Azkaban for using the whole series of Unforgivables, or else at the least to trial for using magic in the presence of Muggles. Yet now standing here even with his wand within reach and Sirius defenseless before him it felt — well, it felt like every other scenario regarding Sirius in his whole life. Sirius had taunted and provoked him yet they’d still kissed in Hogsmeade. Sirius had shared a cigarette with him and given him toast the morning after the full moon yet Remus had viciously slandered his younger brother and Sirius had tricked him into killing someone. Extremes of the worst kind.

He sat in the seat opposite Sirius, pushing his chair back a little because the tables were relatively small. His heart was clattering about in his ribs. Occasionally over the years he’d dreamed of this moment — this was nothing like his dreams. Sirius in real life was a little taller than Remus had remembered and broader about the shoulders; he smelled of woodsmoke and soap and Remus could see he still bit his nails because the beds were ragged and torn up like disturbed graves. The collar of his coat had slipped a little; he wore a Slytherin pendant attached to his shirt. The emerald of it was shocking against the ash-gray of the rest of him.

“I thought you dropped out,” Remus said, gesturing at the pendant.

Sirius’ eyebrows furrowed. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Around,” said Remus, watching at the way Sirius plucked seemingly without realizing at the sleeve of his left arm.

“School just stopped being fun after you left,” Sirius said.

Remus felt his eyebrows lift. “Are you s — ”

“Personally I thought expulsion was like, a bit extreme — ”

“They would’ve sent me to Azkaban, you understand that — ”

“Even with that absolutely _fantastic_ testimony the old man gave in your favor?”

Remus could not tell if Sirius genuinely believed what he was saying or if he was just mocking him. “They set everything up so it looked like I’d done it on purpose, I don’t know if you remember that — ”

“I remember taking Veritaserum — ”

“Yes, because you would’ve lied for them quite easily otherwise — ”

“Anyway you got out of it,” Sirius said, with a kind of tense finality to his voice. “So why do you care so much?”

Remus felt his mouth drop open just slightly. Sirius was eating his sausages — there was a greasy sheen on his fingers. His expression was hard to read.

“It fucked up everything, every single aspect of my life completely,” Remus said. “I got expelled, I lost everyone — ”

“Yes, because you were spending so much time with your friends prior to the event.”

Remus pressed his mouth very tightly into a thin line.

“Anyway it fucked shit up for me too,” Sirius said, “like, I was nearly expelled as well, you wouldn’t know that — ”

“Why did you do it?” Remus interrupted. He thought he already knew the answer but he was sure if he had to hear Sirius complaining about how his life had been affected by the Incident he’d scream, or else hex him.

Sirius shrugged. He pushed his plate aside and Remus saw he’d painted his left thumbnail with black nail polish. He pressed back the loose strands of his hair where it was coming undone from its knot. Then he said:

“I was bored.”

Remus shot the hex out of his wand unspoken without meaning to — it was a Stinging Hex, and it raised a welt on the inside of Sirius’ wrist the size of a garden slug. Sirius exhaled sharply; he grabbed at the place with his opposite hand and glared at Remus and in his eyes was the same hatred and cruelty Remus remembered from school. Except now it was colder and there was a stillness about it, a permanency Remus disliked. He saw the tip of Sirius’ wand inside his sleeve and stiffened, preparing himself for something, the long-awaited duel or else something more raw, a fistfight perhaps, knocking teeth loose, breaking the fine bones of his nose — but then Sirius dragged a hand down his face.

“I was bored,” he repeated. “I’m sorry, you asked, I don’t know what else — I’d had it planned for a while, you know, it wasn’t like, I didn’t wake up that morning and decide.” Later when Remus learned Sirius was considered briefly to become an Auror prior to dropping out of Hogwarts he was not entirely as surprised as he thought he should have been — the methodical way Sirius did things, the slow burn of his ideas, would have fit very well indeed with what was needed in the department. “I really hated Snape and I thought, what possible good could come of his continuing to be alive, who would even miss him? And clearly no one did because when I went back after I got suspended it was like nothing had changed, except that you weren’t there and your friend James made extra effort to fuck us up in the Quidditch final.”

So he’d been suspended. “Why did you — why did they let you go back?”

“Mum and Dad have a heavy hand among the board of directors,” Sirius said, flashing his teeth — but he would not meet Remus’ eyes. If it was the truth it was not the entirety of it. He was pulling again at his left sleeve. Remus remembered Dumbledore saying he thought Sirius had dropped out to join the Death Eaters.

“I wanted to kill you after I realized what happened,” said Remus, quietly.

Sirius’ eyes moved restlessly about the shop. He’d cleaned his plate and pushed it to the side and was scratching idly at the chipping paint on his nail. “Yes, well,” he said. “Likely I shouldn’t have done it at all.”

“Likely,” Remus said. Sirius glanced up at him; his mouth twitched in the corner, and Remus hated him, but in a way almost it was like hating a dog for shitting on the carpet. Sirius who had never in his life been denied a single thing except Remus’ consent to go to bed with him and even that was a rather precarious statement since Remus had been on the verge of giving in when Events had transpired.

After a little while Sirius got up to put his plate on top of the other dirty dishes and Remus got a plain slice of toast with ham and water — his stomach had stopped turning, but only just. When he got back to the table Sirius was smoking another cigarette, the smoke curling through the tendrils of his hair. The sick gray of it made his eyes that strange silvery shade Remus saw, still, sometimes, in the moments before he turned. He knocked his boot against Remus’ foot as Remus sat.

“Why are you here?” Remus asked him.

“I live — ” Sirius gestured with his cigarette hand and the ember flashed in the expanding daylight through the window. “My family have an estate in Hampstead where I moved after I left school.”

“Why are you in Camden, then?”

“No Blacks come here,” said Sirius, the openness surprising Remus into smiling a little before he could bite it back. “Everyone needs a break from family sometimes, right?”

“So you come out here to shock and upset them.”

Sirius laughed. “How’d you guess?”

“It’s all you ever talked about with me — wanting to fuck me to offend your mum, or whatever.”

“Ah, yeah.” Sirius ashed his cigarette into what was left of his coffee. His eyes dropped to Remus’ mouth. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“Do you ever do anything just for yourself?”

“Do you?” Sirius shot back immediately. But Remus could see he’d startled him; he leaned back in his seat and began digging his nail into the welt on his wrist.

“I — ” Remus frowned a little. “Why are you assuming I don’t?”

“Because you’re running with Greyback.”

This in and of itself was a surety that Sirius was a Death Eater. Remus supposed he should’ve been immediately on his feet to call Dumbledore, or else to Stun Sirius and Obliviate the entire shop. He supposed really he should’ve done that the moment he walked inside, rather than sit across from him and watch him artfully smoke his cigarettes and listen to his bullshit excuses and reasoning. Instead he narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his own seat and said:

“How do you know that?”

“How do you think?” Sirius arched an eyebrow. This time when he tugged on his left sleeve it was deliberate. “Greyback discusses all his affairs with us. I mean _all,_ Lupin. The Dark Lord’s been in contact with your master a lot longer than you’re giving him credit for — ”

“I should call the Order and have you arrested right now.”

“You probably should,” Sirius said. He’d broken the skin on his welt with his nail and hissed a little at the pain. With his wrist turned inwards he performed a little wandless magic so as to get the swelling to go down — Remus had never seen a countercurse for a hex work so quickly. He supposed it was Dark magic. Or perhaps only Black magic. He wondered how Sirius had felt, coming to Hogwarts after eleven years of being raised in a house like that, with people like that, to discover his family’s ways were not the only ones, and not even legal ones. He wondered if Sirius had cared.

After a little while Sirius said, “You didn’t answer my question, you know.”

“You mean whether or not I do anything for myself?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes.” Not often. Not in recent memory. Lately Remus had begun suspecting his whole life had been orchestrated from the moment Greyback had torn into him on the Somerset moor, 1965.

“Like — ”

“Like going for walks in the morning without running into people who are gonna disrupt my entire day.” It was, he thought, a nice explanation for why he’d been out at the same time as Sirius. But Sirius only laughed.

“You were out stalking me,” he said, “or something similar.”

Remus rolled his eyes. But also he did not deny it. Sirius was pulling on his third cigarette and Remus wanted to reach out and take it from his hand. His heart in his ribs like a trapped bird. This was the first conversation he’d had in months that was not — solely intended as a means to use him for some or another experiment, or project, or spying. He despised Sirius, and yet he didn’t. And that made him despise him all the more, because he knew he should. God, he knew he should.

“What about you,” Remus said, “you never answered the question either.”

“I do plenty for myself,” Sirius said. The tip of his boot was touching the side of Remus’ calf where Sirius had his legs crossed. When Remus reached out and grasped at his knee Sirius hardly looked surprised, although he did go still, and press his cigarette out into the ashtray.

“Like this?” Remus asked.

Very slowly, Sirius nodded. His eyes were on Remus’ mouth again.

“Do you still wonder what it’s like to lay with a beast?”

Sirius laughed a little, short dry almost nervous sound. Beneath the table his own hand closed over Remus’. The thumb was a little calloused where his wand pressed into the side. His skin was cold. Remus could feel his bones shifting, and the blood —

“I hate you,” Remus said, pulling back so he could stand. “Just so we’re clear.”

Sirius stood too, quickly, banging his knee against the underside of the table. “Yes, yes,” he said, “that’s all right, that’s fine — ” His silver eyes flashed in the sun. “Your place or mine?”

“I’m right down the street,” Remus said, and Sirius nodded, and started for the door. Remus put a five pound note on the table before heading out after him. His mouth was very dry. The heat was stunning.

~

At the flat Remus shut the door behind him and watched Sirius as he removed his boots and the coat. His eyes were moving rapidly over everything. He walked over to examine the television with a sort of polite clinical interest and Remus saw the dark mark upon his inner left forearm. It was faded like a very old tattoo but it was still clearly visible. The skin underneath it was ragged, as though the mark itself were raised off his arm. Below it the faint burn-like scar left by the hex Remus had put on him in the shop. Sirius reached down to touch the wires of the television and Remus walked to his record player. He picked up the first album he saw — Bowie’s _Station to Station._ When he put it on Sirius glanced over, mouth curled:

“Can’t fuck around with me without music, can you.”

Remus rolled his eyes but did not respond. He walked back over to stand beside the fireplace feeling his hands beginning to tremble with nerves. Beneath it his magic which had subsided somewhat in its intensity was thrumming again, golden. He put his hand on Sirius’ shoulder — the right one — and Sirius turned again to look at him. Something felt charged between them. It was astonishing how quickly he felt alongside the hum of his magic the thread of arousal, as ever slightly nauseating, like silt in his chest and between his legs.

“You hexed me there,” Sirius said, shifting his shoulder beneath Remus’ fingers.

“That’s the one?” Remus said — as though he didn’t remember. He rolled Sirius’ sleeve up. The scarring was very old now; it would be three years in September. It was thick; it resembled spiderwebbing cracks on a car windshield. Remus pressed his thumb into the center of it: “What does that feel like?”

“Nothing,” Sirius said, though his breath had caught in his chest, and he was staring at Remus’ mouth. “It doesn’t feel like anything, it — Remus,” he said, and Remus was so startled by the sound of his first name in that voice it took him a moment to realize Sirius had kissed him. His hands were in his hair. His lips felt the same — dry and cool, flavored with smoke and caffeine. He shifted and maneuvered them until Remus was pressed up against the wall. He had his thumb under Remus’ eye.

“I’ve wanted,” he began, “for so long — ”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Remus said dryly. Sirius huffed out against his mouth, biting his lower lip. Remus fisted his hands in his shirt and let himself be pulled downwards to the floor.

“This is probably a really terrible idea,” Remus said, watching Sirius’ long fingers at the snap of his jeans. Sirius paused, looking up at him; he flicked his hair out of his eyes and Remus forgot, holy hell, what he was going to have said.

“So it’s no different than anything else we’ve done,” Sirius said. The words were flippant but the tone was nearly, strangely, gentle. “Don’t overthink it, Lupin.” He pressed his thigh between Remus’ legs, leaned down, and kissed him again. On the stereo Bowie sang: _It’s too late to be grateful, it’s too late to be late again._ Sirius’ hands were on Remus’ chest; beneath his palms Remus’ heart beat as though it were willing Sirius to dig his nails in, crack open the ribs, and take it.

~

Afterwards they threw open all the windows once more against the sun and lay on the bare floor of Remus’ flat not touching because they were sticky with sweat. Remus could feel a bruise rising on his inner thigh where Sirius had sucked the skin so hard it felt like he was drawing blood. He stared at the soft crush of Sirius’ hair against the back of his neck where it had come undone from its ties. He tried not to remember enjoying himself.

“You fuck like a human, anyway,” Sirius said, after a long time. Remus tried to feel angry about it and couldn’t — Sirius’ voice was rough with sex, and his eyes were closed, mouth just open.

“So do you,” Remus said.

“I think — ” Sirius made a motion like he was trying to roll over. “I think we should do this more often.”

“What, like, so you can bring me home and have all the wardings in your house kill me?”

“No — like, for mutual benefit.”

“You’re that sex-starved?”

Sirius opened his eyes. He turned his head so as to look at Remus. He said, “The Dark Lord doesn’t like talking to Greyback directly. He wants an outside channel.”

“I’m not gonna be your fucking — mouthpiece for You Know Who.”

“So Greyback enjoys traveling into wizarding society and speaking to us?” Sirius raised an eyebrow. “We all know how he feels about witches and wizards, even purebloods — it’s not some big fucking secret, Lupin.”

Remus exhaled. “He — no.” Indeed Greyback complained about it often; the Apparition, the hiding. He detested Voldemort’s followers. Likely he would have killed them all had he not thought himself using them as means to an end.

“So what do you think? I pass on messages from the Dark Lord, you pass on messages from Greyback — ”

“We fuck — ”

“You catch on quick,” said Sirius. His eyes moved restlessly over Remus’ face. Remus wondered whose idea this had been — how much Sirius had at stake here. He wondered what would happen if he said no.

“All right,” he said, and Sirius at last managed to roll onto his side, so he could kiss the stretch of Remus’ forearm closest to his mouth. “But you know I work with Dumbledore, too.”

Sirius shrugged. “We do what we have to,” he said. Pushing himself up all the way he covered Remus’ body and kissed him. It felt like sealing a pact — like the worst possible idea. Yet it was what he wanted — what they both wanted. And certainly Dumbledore did not have to know everything, either.

Easier than any alternative, Remus thought, and arched against Sirius as his teeth found his throat.


	9. Chapter 9

**_June 1980_ **

The pale shimmering ectoplasmic creature appeared first in the window of the door. At first Remus’ eyes were too strained from the persistent darkness to see beyond the bluish-silver light of it, but gradually its wisps and tendrils took on more solid form and he realized it was a hawk. It tilted its head and watched him with sharp, curious eyes. He could feel the warmth of it through the metal and though he knew it had to be a dream he reached out like to touch it. The bleak confused feeling separated a little from his mind like whey from milk. The idea that this could be real was too hopeful and too frightening in its hope and he flinched from it.

They had taken him shortly after Dumbledore left still shackled in silver with the rest of Greyback’s pack down to an antechamber where the Dementors were waiting in a hovering sucking mass to escort them to Azkaban. At first the fear he felt was such that he began to weep. Very quickly the ability to weep was taken from him, as was the ability to fear beyond the pure animal instinct of the wolf, and of whatever section of his brain remained human. By the time they arrived at the docks on the North Sea he had forgotten everything but the pain in his wrists and the cold which was encroaching as night fell. The Dementors breathed in tandem, hoarse sucking sound as of water dredged through clogged pipes. Greyback was laughing the whole time. As they set out across the sea the moon began to rise and his teeth caught the glint of it. “We will be rewarded for our suffering,” he said to Remus, or perhaps to the pack at large.

By the time they arrived at the prison it was close to dawn. The MLE officials with their Patronuses in the boats opposite Remus’ departed first with some of the Dementors so as to help — i.e., jostle roughly with harsh laughter only just dimmed by the presence of the Dementors — Remus and the others from the boats. From there they’d gone inside and been placed in their cells. The handcuffs were removed but it was hardly a relief as the skin had been very nearly melted away by that point and the blood had dried in the lines on Remus’ hands and where it ran fresh it made cuts and grooves he would never be able to unsee. And the Dementors latched onto the memory of the pain and humiliation and exploited it and made it their first feast from him.

Now with the Patronus in the door he thought he could tell it was summer — the heat, and the stench of bodies. He was unsure as to how long he’d been in Azkaban. The days and nights blended together into an amorphous smear like film coated in Vaseline. Some days he could remember things better than others. Such as: you are only a monster and everything you have ever tried to do has burned to ash. You have killed before and you are paying for it now three years later. You are the only one who knows who betrayed James and Lily and no one will ever believe you and they would not have believed you had you been able to tell them. Occasionally, the silver flash of eyes, in the moments before they were subsumed by the memories of every cruel dismal thing Sirius had done to him — of which there were many. His mother’s death and his father’s soon behind. The rat existing in the world outside in the war in the streets of London —

There was a shadow behind the Patronus in the door. After a moment Remus realized it was a person. And after another moment he realized that person was Sirius Black. In the interim between when they’d last seen each other and now it appeared he’d lost weight; the light of his hawk cast deep shadows beneath his cheekbones and his eyes were bruised and unslept. He was looking in through the small window with dawning horror upon his face. The hawk stepped back and settled its talons on his shoulder. They shared the same eyes, Remus noticed dully. He was still unconvinced this was not a dream and so did not move even when Sirius glanced to his right and dissembled his expression into the cold aristocracy which was all the Dementors ever allowed Remus to remember of him.

“This is the prisoner,” Sirius said to someone unseen. His hawk was watching Remus with an expression so like Sirius Remus nearly smiled; it clearly said, keep it together. He thought if this was a dream certainly the repercussions would be terrible. And yet all the time the static in his mind was lessening. Even in their worst moments the Dementors had not allowed him that.

“Remus Lupin?” The voice was uncertain, and terrified, and barely audible. “But he’s dangerous, my lord, and — ”

“Which is precisely why I need him, Minister,” Sirius interrupted. “The Dark Lord wants only the elite few he thinks are up to his strenuous tasks.” A pause. Through the gauze in Remus’ mind it was difficult indeed to track the conversation. “Unless of course you’d like to question his decisions?”

“No.” There was a soft snick in the lock; the door opened, scraping at the bottom against the stone floor. Sirius was standing there with his hawk softly pulsating streams of light into the black corridor and beside him the Minister of Magic, a thin balding man, trembling, his own otter Patronus barely corporeal. “No, of course not.”

“I didn’t think so,” Sirius said. He was watching Remus in a way that made him wonder what he looked like. It was becoming less and less easy to tell if this were a dream or not. The moon was about a week from full and for the first time in months Remus could feel it beyond the walls of Azkaban pulling up his spine, ready to split him open. In the suffocating darkness it had been increasingly difficult to hold in his mind when he would change, or that he would change at all.

“You look bloody fucking awful,” Sirius said, odd strain to his voice.

Remus stared at him. He sounded almost surprised, as though it was incomprehensible to him that people really, truly suffered in Azkaban. It was such a Sirius reaction —

“What did you think this was, a day spa?” He was so unused to speaking he could hardly believe his mouth still worked. Or that he had a mouth at all.

Sirius’ jaw tightened. “I know what — I know what it is, don’t be an ass,” he said. Then: “You’re to come with me.” Remus could see he was embarrassed. This also was so like Sirius it seemed impossible it could be a hallucination. Still he hesitated and Sirius said: 

“Look, would you rather I let you stay here? Because I can — ” 

Remus rolled his eyes — the movement unfamiliar enough to be a little dizzying — and nodded at the hawk. “You have happy memories?” he asked, to get Sirius off it — to placate him, perhaps, part of his long-unremembered job. 

The mouth — first the expression of surprise, and then that smile. His eyes were so silver in the glow of his Patronus — like clear glass in a lake, like the ocean before a storm. No, this wasn’t a dream. The Dementors did not allow for such vivid detail. Slowly Remus struggled to his feet — his knees cracked. 

“It wasn’t me,” Sirius said, as Remus came forward. He was speaking hushedly and yet his voice was clear even amidst the screams and wailing and general suffering of the place. In the wash of clarity from the Patronus Remus remembered or thought he remembered something similar to this years ago, in Hogsmeade, in Potions… a Silencing charm… “That sold out your friends, I mean. That wasn’t — anything to do with me.”

When Remus was close enough to him he saw in the light cast by the hawk that Sirius wore a Ministry badge on the front of his robes. Its design had been altered so that it glowed a pearlescent shade of greenish-silver. The dark mark was behind the M. The snake undulated. Remus nodded at it and Sirius shrugged.

“We’re in the Ministry now,” he said. “Voldemort wanted control of it — I mean, obviously.” As ever he sounded less awed than bored by the name. Yet the Minister of Magic did not so much as flinch.

“Obviously,” Remus repeated, sarcastic. His voice sounded to his ears like grating knives. He paused in the door — he could not remember the last time he’d stood in its frame. The hawk was hovering. Remus could feel the instinctual fear of the wolf wanting desperately for him to get away now he had a chance yet with his mind cleared so much from the persistent vacuous sucking of the Dementors he set his jaw, and made himself ask:

“Are you actually, do you really want to take me to Voldemort? He wants — ”

“What he wants,” Sirius said, “is the expansion of our ideologies. As such he’s set up a good many outside connections in other countries including on the continent and he wants me there in France. I have relatives in Chartres who are more than willing to join the cause.”

Remus glanced sideways at the Minister. “He’s sending you there?”

“He knows I’ll have an easy recruitment,” said Sirius. “He asked me to come — he wants to build a werewolf army and he wants from among Greyback’s. So he sent me to Azkaban before I left.”

The inchoate feeling that something wasn’t quite right — “Sirius, I’m not — ”

“He didn’t specify who I should take,” Sirius said. “And there are a thousand packs in Paris alone.”

In the long absence of anything Remus had forgotten what it was to feel other than despair, exhaustion, futility… Sirius had his wand out to refresh his hawk and it reflected in his eyes. He said, “So are you going to come or should I pick an actual, you know, active member of our society — ”

Remus stepped from the cell door. Together the three of them walked past the Dementors down to the docks where the Minister stopped to give some kind of instructions to the guard. Sirius had taken a boat in but now he stood in the waxing moonlight with the waves breaking just beyond his feet.

“Can you handle traveling by Portkey,” Sirius asked, “it’s a bit of a journey but I’ve already got my bags in France — ”

“It’s all right,” said Remus. The world was gray — the dawn not far off. Despite it being summer there was in the wind from the sea a deep chill which Remus had not been able to perceive from inside the prison. He felt goosebumps rise on his arms, the pale damaged skin exposed on his wrists beneath the thin uniform. It was remarkable how different even this world, this colorless featureless world, seemed to him after so many monotonous months in his cell.

Sirius reached into his robes and pulled out a magically shrunken vinyl which after a moment Remus recognized to be _Ziggy Stardust._ Then Sirius retrieved also a wand. Remus realized — feeling muddied and slow, as though just awakening — that it was his own.

“I went to your flat,” Sirius said, “after you’d been arrested, before anyone could raid it. I got these — I thought you’d want the wand again, at least.”

Remus took it. The golden thread of his magic curled uncertainly into his fingertips. “I had no idea you were so sentimental,” he said, sliding it inside his sleeve.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Just — take your end of the Portkey, would you,” he said. Remus heard the edge of a smile in his voice. He took the record in between his thumb and forefinger. The other wrist was clasped by Sirius, for no reason. His thumb was on the tender scarred skin where the silver handcuffs had bitten into it. His fingers were cold, the nailbeds ragged. Remus could smell for the first time in three months the sea, and beyond it —

The Portkey snatched them away. When at last they landed Remus heard the ringing of bells — felt nascent sunlight upon his face, and Sirius’ fingers still squeezing his wrist — and far below them the chatter of townsfolk in the early morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, here we are at the end. i have been so, so proud to share this fic with all of you, and can't wait to see what y'all think of the ending. thanks again to eve for her tireless, massive help with beta'ing, general cheerleading, and enthusiasm. also infinite thanks and gratitude to mika, whose patience and support cannot be overstated. i hope y'all have enjoyed this fic as much as i enjoyed writing it
> 
> happy new year! again, i'm [here](http://astralhux.tumblr.com) on tumblr


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